Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre

I read this when I was fourteen, and hated it. Jane Eyre's such an uptight, staid, prissy little thing that I have no idea what Rochester saw in her. The plot is so moralistic and heavy-handed, and the dialogue is so contrived I felt like dry-retching. I realise that it's considered a classic of Englsih literature, but really, aren't there any good dead English female writers after Jane Austin?

By the way, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is brilliant. So much raw talent, so much potential... it's a shame she died so young.

Funny, I'm just the opposite. I read Jane Eyre in between 10th and 11th grade and liked it. I re-read it years later and still liked it, but was a bit bogged down by the dated vernacular.

I don't know if I'll ever read it again, just so that I can keep that feeling it gave me when I really liked it.

I have never been able to finish Wuthering Heights, but it was never required reading either. As I get older I find I am less tolerant of dated reading.

Same trouble with H.G. Wells and Kerouac. Although I still like Sherlock Holmes. I dunno . . .

I did always think Emily was the cuter Bronte, if that counts.

I read it far too young (11) and had no clue what all the heaving passion was about, which sort of explains why I didn't understand a word of it. I liked it, especially the Red Room bits and the crazy wife in the attic, but couldn't get too involved. Only when I was 14 and in the first throes of romantic love did it mean anything to me: the telepathic bits, the premonitions, the pathetic fallacy, all of that is very interesting and gives it a certain 'spooky' cohesion that pre-figures Hardy, I think.

But Wuthering Heights 'pwns' Jane Eyre on every level. ;D

I totally agreed with the first post.

Wuthering Heights has got to be my favourite book of all time, the characters are just so marvelous.

I found Jane Eyre (the character) to be thouroughly unlikeable, insipid and uninteresting, and the plot quite unbelieveable. I mean, did she not pass out after running away, at the door of her long lost cousins. Yeah, really likely. I'm sure there are other instances, but I've not read it for a while :)

I'm so glad someone shares my opinion on these two.

See I'm the opposite...I liked Jane Eyre well enough, but could not stand Wuthering Heights. Hell, the only way I was able to get into it was to convince myself that this Emily was constructing a rather elaborate parody of her sister's work.

Then again, I think my appreciation/perspective on Jane Eyre changed drastically after reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Could never look at Mr. Rochester the same way again and suddenly Jane's happy ending took on a much darker twist. I liked it.

Hera:

'pwns' has me stumped. What does it mean?

Scary- internet speak for "owns", meaning Wuthering Heights "owns" (is better than) Jane Eyre.

No dog in this fight, I haven't read either...

Thanks, AA1986.

Some Internet language evolves so fast I can't keep up with it. When I programmed my first page back in 1994 or so, LOL meant 'lots of love.'

I got really creeped out when I saw it used liberally over the past year, only to find out that it had evolved into 'lots of laughs.'

I haven't touched a chat room in nearly ten years and LibraryThing is the first message board I've messed with in years too.

Scaryguy gets creeped out pretty easy.

Or Laughing Out Loud.

As for Jane Eyre, I just read it last summer for the first time. I liked it, but I think it's heavily flawed and probably wouldn't get published today.

I loved Wuthering Heights, but I also think it's rather flawed. And someone recently pointed out to me that the whole book is in the first half and the second half is just a bunch of words that go on and on. That struck me as completely accurate. So I must revise my statement to say that I loved the first half of Wuthering Heights.

I'm terribly sorry: I'm an 'old fart' myself and slip into internet jargon online rather easily (too much contact with young people at work keeps me current).

Don't get creeped out! I'm not one for acronyms as a rule: the roflmfao route can be tedious and sometimes necessitates a visit to urbandictionary.com on my part.

*hugs in non-threatening way

I agree that Wuthering Heights is flawed. It's overly melodramatic, the second generation love triangle is contrived, and the vernacular is really annoying. It reads like the workings of a hyper-imaginative, suicidal teen, which is probably why I like it. Despite that, it's one of the few books that made me feel drained once I finished it. And Heathcliff and Catherine kept popping into my thoughts for about six months afterwards. It takes a special talent to make characters that memorable. It's heartbreaking to realise what was lost. Emily Bronte had the potential to be the greatest English writer. Ever.

#11 - I agree entirely. If you compare it to Frankenstein - also written by an over-wrought, passionate, intelligent and literate teen - it is repetitive, over-wrought and melodramatic. However, within the unity of the novel, this doesn't seem to 'jar' on second reading: there's a beautiful symmetry to the narrative thread, the journals within the Nelly narrative, the uppity narrator Lockwood, the garrulous Nelly, the passion and youth of Cathy.

As you can tell, I love it. WH is definitely in my top five all-time read-again-any-time-at-all novels. For a young woman, the scene where Cathy and Heathcliff meet clandestinely in the drawing room, while Nelly keeps watch for her husband, is probably the most erotically charged passage in literature, in English - astonishing. Anyone's who's been in love couldn't fail to be moved by the story, it's heartbreaking how Heathcliff deteriorates when Cathy dies. The passages about their childhood on the moors are haunting, evocative and straight from the soul.

From what I've read, the rest of the Brontes were aware that Emily was the most deeply gifted. To be honest, the family's story is in itself a heart-breaker: I get very upset when I read Mrs Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte.

For me, the story of the Bronte's lives goes to show that the great Victorian obsession with sanitation was based on very sound principles: without good sewerage, clean drinking water and proper living conditions children and the vulnerable died needlessly. The same is also true of the terrible toll childbirth exacted on women prior to good hygiene in hospitals and a more professional attitude towards gynaecology.

I'm being very prosaic today.

I didn't read Jane Eyre until a couple of years ago, and suddenly realised where Barbara Cartland had gotten her story (singular) from, so compared to that Jane Eyre is simply wonderful. But apart from that bias I found Jane annoying

My mother simply loves Wuthering Heights and kept telling me bits and pieces from it all threough my childhood, something that has made me a bit reluctant to pick it up...

I quite enjoyed Jane Eyre but have never understood why people love it so much and why so many film and tv adaptations are made of it. I have always thought that Mrs Rochester was appallingly badly treated. I would also recommend Wide Sargasso Sea for the back story. Mr Rochester may have been tricked into marrying her but she didn't exactly get a brilliant deal either.

It completely floors me why people love Wuthering Heights so much. In particular, why do people consider Heathcliffe to be a romantic hero? In my opinion he is violent, abusive and cruel. I read the book when I was a teenager and I read it again a couple of years ago and my opinion had not changed.

I first read Jane Eyre when I was about 14 and loved it. I've reread it a few times since.

Just think how it would be if Thursday Next had not changed the ending to Jane Eyre...or let Heathcliffe stay as a leading man in Hollywood instead of dragging him back to Wuthering Heights.

I've never quite gotten Wuthering Heights either. ;)

I loved Wuthering Heights and have read it several times (though not recently) but, ironically, I coudn't stand Heathcliff or Catherine. I agree with Jaine9 that Heathcliff was abusive, crueal and violent. To me he is absolutetly NOT a romantic figure. Catherine is vain, superficial and spoiled. Heathcliff and Catherine are essentially two characters who really deserved each other but through their own selfishness and narcissism manage to destroy two whole families and some pretty decent people. The magic, for me, is actually in the second half of the book where....

SPOILER WARNING

We are left with just Cathy Linton and Hareton Earnshaw (I think it's Hareton, it's been awhile). Hareton had a brutal and violent upbringing and was, essentially, a mini-Heathcliff. Cathy had a spoiled, little princess upbrining and was a mini-Catherine. And yet, they both manage to look past themselves and find tenderness and love. Hareton becomes softer and Cathy becomes more generous. They become the couple Catherine and Heathcliff should have been if they could just have looked past their own egos and selfishness. So, for me the real romance is at the end, not the beginning.

At least that's how I read it.

Jane Eyre is a bit more problematic for me. I enjoyed the book, but never really got inside Mr Rochester's head or figured out what it was that got Jane to be so in love with him.

I wasn't able to get through the first chapter of Wuthering Heights and have Jane Eyre on my TBR list. I'm not sure I want to though, if so many think it was so bad.

Jaine9 I never looked at Jane Eyre the same way again after reading Wide Sargasso Sea. Mr. Rochester became such a pitiable figure after that book as opposed to this Byronic figure that Jane falls in love with. And yes Streamsong I'm grateful for Thursday's intervention too...not that Rochester was man of the year but Jane would have been miserable with St. John.

As for Heathcliff...my completely unproven probably academically incorrect theory was that Emily Bronte was subtly making fun of her sister's propensity for having her heroines fall in love with such brooding moody men by making Heathcliff a Rochester or a M. Paul without the warm fuzzies. Ironically enough as much as I couldn't stand Wuthering Heights, without it there wouldn't have been that amazing group therapy scene in The Well of Lost Plots. Pro-Caths, Cathy Linton gagging herself with her finger, actually admitting that no one has a clue what Joseph is ever saying...I love it.

Where there ANY good men in Jane Eyre? What stood out for me is how none of them had normal conversations. Every time a man spoke, he was either preaching or making a speech. The women spoke normally, so it isn't that Bronte didn't know how to write. I disliked all the men in this book and Rochester was just slightly less repulsive than the others.

But aside from this, I liked the book. There were a few other really silly things too, but nothing as annoying as the men.

I love that book. I think I was 14 when I first read it. My mother played Grace in a play in high school. She may kill me for saying when she was in the play. Oh well, I was over 50 years ago. I have read it at least five times and when I am in a sappy mood I watch the movie. I also watch The Lady in White, Mansfield Park, and Portrait of a Marriage when I am in the same mood.

I read both books in the last year and was somewhat disappointed in both. I didn't think they were horrible, but I didn't really understand what was supposed to be so great about them.

>14 jaine9:, I have to completely agree with you about Heathcliff. I had always thought that Wuthering Heights was supposed to be some amazing love story, since that's how it seems to get framed in movies and popular culture. When I read it, I was appalled by the cruelty of everyone in the story! How is this supposed to be romantic?

#21 -- I had always thought that Wuthering Heights was supposed to be some amazing love story, since that's how it seems to get framed in movies and popular culture. When I read it, I was appalled by the cruelty of everyone in the story! How is this supposed to be romantic?

-------------------

I don't find it romantic. I'd describe it as obsessive passion.

Perhaps the description "romantic" here is being confused with the Romantic era of literature? Just a thought.

Insipid? Jane Eyre? I strongly disagree. I read Pride and Prejudice to see what all the fuss was about and though I finished it, I found it painfully boring and silly. I get upset when I go to Borders and all through the store are Jane Austen rip-off's. I believe she is even solving mysteries now. I just do not see what all the fuss is about. I like my literature to stir passion in me, some kind of feeling. Rochester and Heathcliff are dark and interesting characters. Jane Eyre is strong-not prissy. I felt too many of the characters behaved ridiculously in Pride and Prejudice for my taste. I don't mean to "bash your opinion #1, I just have strong feelings on my love of Jane Eyre! Also, I have not read any other books by Austen so my opinion is limited to Pride and Prejudice.

I liked Jane Eyre. I also liked Pride and Prejudice.

I haven't read Wuthering Heights yet, but the movie versions always strike me as examples of emo teenage love affairs, only with proper English and no piercings. Maybe the book will be different.

You might consider George Eliot, another female Victorian author who I think "pwns" both the Brontes and even Austen (who I also love).

The Brontes are overrated, imho.

>24 ellevee:, ellevee, you are too funny! emo kids...

Is there anyone who LOVES both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? From scanning these posts fairly quickly, it seems that you like either one or the other...or you haven't read one.

I'm a fan of Jane Eyre myself, but I'd be interested to see if you can "enjoy" these two sets of seemingly opposite characters.

#27: Is there anyone who LOVES both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? From scanning these posts fairly quickly, it seems that you like either one or the other...or you haven't read one.

---------------

Hmmm. Good question. I've read both, and I think both are flawed. Even so, I would say I loved Wuthering Heights, and liked Jane Eyre a lot. I think Wuthering Heights is the more flawed of the two (I can completely understand why some readers hate it), but something in the dark, twisted passion appeals to me. Jane Eyre isn't so dark and strange.

On a tangent, I think it's interesting to compare the Brontes with Jane Austen.

I love Jane Eyre! This is probably my favorite "classic" book.

For me, Jane Eyre (the character) has been a very strong role model. She advocates strength against adversity, carrying on despite things being really bad, and standing up for yourself and what you want. One of the most powerful moments in the book (again, to me) is when she tells Rochester that she will not stay by him without being married. That's something that she feels strongly about, and was willing to sacrifice everything to get. And again, when she refusing to marry the man that she doesn't want to. She stands up for herself!
And to me, that's amazing, for a women at that time to insist on protecting herself and doing what's right for her.
I think that a lot of young women today need a role model like that.

As a side note, I really wasn't a fan of Pride and Prejudice, but I was being made to read it for school and that always puts a damper on things. I will most likely try to read it again without school and reports looming over me.

To Welfycat:

Yeah all that's true from a white woman's perspective. Who was she really talking about? African-American women tend to be left out of things like this. Even today there is a difference between white feminism and black feminism. If you want the African-American woman perspective read Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. (Perennial classic!)

I must say I love Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. I like Wuthering Hights alright, it can be great on a dark rainy night when your really in the mood for some gothic melodrama. But in general I find that Cathy and Heathclif's characters bare little resemblance to real people. If fact the reason why I like Jane Austen so much is her remarkable grasp of everyday human nature. The ladies maybe in period dress, but I can easily recognize their foibles in myself and people I know.

As for Jane Eyre I think it falls between the other two: a dark gothic romance, but with three dimensional characters. I think people who find Jane prissy, have to remember that she has been repressed all her life, first by her family and then at the orphanage. She is also a women alone in the world with no money. That she talks back at all to Rochester is quite something. The book absolutely has flaws. Now when I read it I kind of skip over the boring heavy handed bits.

I do have a few things to say about Wide Sargaso Sea. I really like to read books where classic novels are reinterpreted or told from a different perspective. It can be very enlightening. But I must remind readers who then find it hard to sympathize with Jane and Rochester: the events of Wide Sargasso Sea didn't actually happen in Jane Eyre. If we take the facts of the novel at face value, Mrs. Rochester is truly mad and violent. If we take Rochester at his word, mental institutions of the time were horrible and she really would have gotten better care under Rochester's protection.

#33: Theizz,

Very well said.

I can just about tolerate Jane Eyre, mostly by imagining things from The Eyre Affair going on in the background, but I have yet to find a way to get over my hate of Wuthering Heights. To me it, and a lot of other gothic lit, goes right over the deep end. I'm not sure why, I just find it all completely hard to believe, which considering how far I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for SF seems kind of odd.
Probably it's the same reason I find "Forbidden Brides Of The Faceless Slaves In The Nameless House Of The Night Of Dread Desire" so funny. I mean seriously let's all go running about the moor's on foggy, moonless nights in our PJ's. If you're going to write a book with that stuff going on it you can't take it seriously.
Plus I always feel like Mr. Rochester has nearly enough good qualities to overshadow the bad. I mean he does keep his crazy wife at home, which if you keep it in a historical perspective is better than the alternative. I've had too many psychology classes that talk about the history of the field to think that there were a lot of better ways they could have gone at that point. And he tries to do the right thing by his "ward".
Heathcliff just seems like someone who's way to prone to using violence to solve problems. Maybe that comes from too many lectures on the cycle of abuse, but I disliked him the first time I read the book in 7th grade, so I don't think I'm likely to change my mind. Cathy annoys me, but not to the same degree.
I think it's kind of fair to compare Jane Austen books at least with Jane Eyre, they both go into what the reasons for marriage where at the time, and the way that societal relationships and expectations created pressure which could be very hard to live with.
I like Jane Austen's books more than anything of the Bronte sisters because she stayed more firmly with realism, and to me it's more easy to see what she wants you to take away from the book without her having been didactic or really overt with it. Plus I feel her characters are all much easier to like, or at least understand, since they're more realistic.

Gothic fiction is characterised by transgression - of boundaries, of social and moral codes - and excess. I think that's one reason for their popularity throughout the social class structure in the 18th century, although they were seen as damaging to a young woman (cause them to fall into hysterics etc.)

Before you despair, look closer at the gothic novels and you see that they're not all swooning and poetry; in fact, the heroines are often feisty feminist strong bodies that conduct themselves in ways they would not be able to in times of peace and harmony. Give ann radcliffe a try for example.

# 34: MrsRadcliffe said "Before you despair, look closer at the gothic novels and you see that they're not all swooning and poetry"

Ah, but the women who aren't beautiful, fragile flowers are rarely the heroines. Don't get me wrong- I adore gothic fiction- but I'd have to disagree with you to some extent. I think part of what I love about them is exactly what other people often dislike- they just go for it. No holds barred, embrace the ridiculousness of 'running about the moor's on foggy, moonless nights in our PJ's' (thanks for the great quote, sydaisy). I also love The Monk, though, which pokes fun at all of that, because IMHO it is ridiculous, albeit loveably so.

But I digress. I will speak as someone who loved not only Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but also all of Jane Austen's works last I checked. I haven't read the Bronte's in a while, but I did love them both back when I read them, which I believe was done back to back. Granted, I was at that time a super spookypants goth chick, so anything that involved tragic love, despair, madness, etc., was very much my cup of tea. I would try to articulate the why of this love more clearly, but I have to go to work. Perhaps later, if people are still talking.

Sorry yes I think I slipped back into college mode back there!

That's okay, I'm still in college mode.
I was never really into the whole tragic love and despair thing, but that 's not necessarily a deal breaker for me. I'm also not a big fan of the writing style in Wuthering Heights. It always seems a bit clunky to me. I can stand to read Poe stuff just because of the way he writes, despite his topic choices, or Shakespeare when he gets all melodramatic in Romeo and Juliet. It's not my favorite of his plays, but I can read it and appreciate it.
Wuthering Heights just makes me feel like I'm slogging through an interminable bog mentally. Jane Eyre is slightly better, but I still tend to mentally edit when reading it, which does cut down the enjoyment somewhat.

I read Jane Eyre and fell in love with it. The bad thing about it, though, was that I read it when I was about 15 or 16, and I actually BELEIVED crap like that could really happen. I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Pride and Prejudice, and Madame Bovary all around the same time as JE, and was really screwed-up for the next ten years. Reality can be cruel.

I've read both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and I fall in the camp of preferring Jane. I love Jane's courage. She could have had a secure life in that school where she ended up teaching, but she wanted a bit more adventure. Yes, stumbling across her cousins was far-fetched, but I can cope.

Her ultimate inability to bend her will to St. John's, despite all his insistance, delights me. She would rather have the "dreaded" spinster's life than to be untrue to herself, she has too much self-respect to allow it.

And the line, "Reader, I married him" carries such serene triumph and respressed "neener-neener" to fate that I get chills whenever I reach it at the end of the book.

#39- And the line, "Reader, I married him" carries such serene triumph and respressed "neener-neener" to fate that I get chills whenever I reach it at the end of the book.

------------------

Oh, that's just great! I've never looked at it that way, but you're right. And funny too.

Ooh I have just ordered the eyre affair from amazon - my first fforde book!

Jane Eyre >>>> Wuthering Heights!

There seems to be a habit that people analyse the plots and pick out flaws. Why is that so? Why just not let the book's magic take you away?

>42 TheNun:, TheNun - Respectfully, I think that analyzing a book and picking out its flaws is an important part of reading. Not all the time - sometimes its just purely escapist, even for a nerd like me - and not to a ridiculous extent - you can't really criticize authors for being a product of their times, for example, even if you wish they had been revolutionaries. But I find that thinking critically about a book allows me to see both its strengths and weaknesses.

In terms of this group, I think its purpose is to complain about books people hated - hence the "Awful Lit" part. Not everyone agrees with you that there is any magic in Jane Eyre, and that's ok - just like its ok if you think there is. If you disagree, you should post a defense of the book - maybe you will change some minds! Best of luck to you! :)

Fannyprice - I've got no problems with people disagreeing with me. I also have no problems people analysing books, its part of studying literature, notwithstanding what I said. There is also nothing wrong with being escapist and being simply entertained. And I do happen to realise that this is an Awful Lit website, I've also have the right to say that I really like Jane Eyre.

>44 TheNun:, So why do you like Jane Eyre so much? I know many people are huge fans of the book and its frequently mentioned as a favorite book.

For me, I guess I just didn't like the novel's resolution. I wanted Jane to strike off on her own and do great things. Perhaps that's unrealistic, but I felt that the way she chose to spend her life kind of rewarded Rochester for his duplicity and bad behavior. I know that he paid a price for what he did but still, the whole thing did not sit well with me. My appreciation of Jane Eyre is now complicated by the fact that I've just read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which makes me dislike the characters of the Bronte's novel even more. Even though that's kind of not fair. :)

I'm interested in that you think Rochester was duplicitous. Maybe he was because he did disclose his situation. However, I didn't see it that way. I thought this is a man who has been defrauded of his youth and life by his marriage to his wife. He also obviously loved Jane. It was a highly unfortunate situation that he was in. Yes, he took the vows with his wife in sickness and health but I think that in such a case, its so extreme and he did take care of her. Likewise, for Jane to accept him in his final state shows true love. I see this as a true romance and I see this as a novel of the great triumphs humans have over adversity. Jane was such a strong and measured girl, she deserves to be happy and found love in the strangest places.

I'm a huge Jane Eyre fan, and I find books like Adele and Wide Sargasso Sea to take away from the novel itself, since it changes one person's perception of a character that was until then in a well-established novel, and there in itself is its own success story. Many books go out of publication every year, and it's not too many that can survive almost two hundred years. I'm sure the rip-offs won't survive the test of time.

I keep reading about "flawed novels." I don't understand this concept unless someone were to perhaps point out a "flawless" novel to me. We can certainly find inconsistencies and "flaws" in any novel we read, even our favorite ones. Maybe it comes down to a-book-is-a-book-is-a-book to me. I don't know. It's one thing to be an analytical and critical reader, and it's another thing to nit-pick over the ifs, ands, buts, nors, ors, fors, and yets. I'm so glad I'm done with college lit classes.

>47 quillmenow:, quillmenow - First, I just have to say, your username is awesome!

Second of all, interesting post. I just finished Wide Sargasso Sea and while I enjoyed it very much, I had a really hard time reviewing it because I had to think to myself that this was a different author's take on the characters of Jane Eyre and, although it was really interesting, I couldn't let it change the characters of that book from Bronte's perspective, if that makes any sense. The story still stands as she wrote it, I just think that Jean Rhys has sort of shown us one possibility of how those characters could have gotten to that point. Its kind of like literary criticism written in a fictional style, I guess.

I'm not sure though, if I would include Wide Sargasso Sea in the same category as some of the contemporary, fluffy attempts to cash in on classic literary works (like "sequels" to Jane Austen, which Emma Tennant is also known for). Perhaps this is just me responding to the fact that Rhys' book has already sort of been canonized and these lesser sequels have not been. I agree that it hasn't stood the test of time for as long as Jane Eyre has, and it will be interesting to see if people are still reading Wide Sargasso Sea and responding to it in 50 or 100 years. But I don't think its fair to call it a "rip-off." While Rhys was self-consciously writing a book in relation to a literary classic (as evidenced by her letters, some of which are included in the Norton Critical Edition of her book), her book does not really feel like an attempt to cash in on readers' love of Jane Eyre, if only because it seems like it gives the reader exactly the opposite of what s/he would want. I think its an attempt to show us the story from another side and that it does raise important issues about race, class, gender, culture and make the reader think again about Jane Eyre from perhaps a more modern perspective. I don't think it lessens the original in any way.

# 48- I'm not sure though, if I would include Wide Sargasso Sea in the same category as some of the contemporary, fluffy attempts to cash in on classic literary works (like "sequels" to Jane Austen, which Emma Tennant is also known for). Perhaps this is just me responding to the fact that Rhys' book has already sort of been canonized and these lesser sequels have not been.

----------
Wide Sargasso Sea is not at all in the category of "rip off" -- it is a literary work that stands on its own, as you've explained perfectly. I'd like to add one more point. I find texts such as Wide Sargasso Sea, or for another example, The Hours (which points back to Mrs. Dalloway) both inform and are informed by the original text. By that I mean when I read them, they enrich my interest in the original book, but also that the original book enriches my interest and understanding of the later book. It's sort of a circular relationship that plays with levels of meaning and understanding.

These types of novels are a world away from the writer who says "I love Jane Austen" (or Jane Eyre, or Gone with the Wind), "and lots of other readers do too, so I'm going to write a sequel." Are those books any more than fan fiction? They don't end up in a Norton Critical edition, they're usually not studied in literature courses, they haven't had critically acclaimed movie versions made from them, and as you pointed out, they aren't canonized. Wide Sargasso Sea is over 40 years old, so I'd say it's stood a test of time, even though it hasn't been in print for 160 years.

#48

I agree that Wide Sargasso Sea has staying power, and I was thinking more along the lines of these Pride and Prejudice sagas that seem to be clogging up the shelf space today. However, I personally dislike any continuation of a classic novel. It may be basic snobbery on my part, or it may be that I find it egotistical of any author to write sequels to a classic novel. I'm sure a lot of the prequels and sequels are written out of a deep love and respect for the original work, but recently I've started to believe that the P&P sequels are considered sure-fire money makers from the authors and the publishing houses.

Other than that, there are always going to be exceptions that disprove a person's theory of all sequels and prequels being complete crap. I'll relent and say that Wide Sargasso Sea is an exception, but personally, I didn't like the feel of that book, and I resented it for its perception of Mr. Rochester. It's a personal thing, really, since I've had the hots for Mr. Rochester since I was fourteen.

After studying Jane Eyre for my degree I have to say that I can no longer read the novel and just enjoy the novel. I am constantly seeing it in terms of postcolonial theory and feminist presuppositions about feminity and madness in the period.

Jane Eyre is one of those novels that I grew up with, read it for the first time when I was 11 and the latest time when I was 21. Looking at it from different angles at different points of my life made me appreciate it differently.

The textbook gcse answer would go that Rcohester was disfigured so that he and Jane could be married in an equal relationship because otherwise Jane - from her gender and her lower class background - would not have been his equal. That is her reasoning for not entering into marriage earlier in the novel.

She was a governess because at that point in history, women who were educated and yet not very rich had limited options if they did not want to starve. I felt sorry for governesses for a long time as they don't really fit into any strata of society, being looked down on by the upper classes and thought of as hoity-toity by the lower.

The first wife in the attic has now become a symbol of feminist theory after the groundbreaking book the madwoman in the attic which discusses how many women still hide parts of themselves symbolically in an attic etc. Although this is probably not the place for a feminist deconstruction of Jane Eyre!

One of the most haunting things about the novel for me occurs at the start when Jane is in the red room as a child. I watched the tv adaptation when I was about the same age and still connect it in my head with sitting on the window ledge in my parents' dining room.

Most likely neither of these book would be published because Hollywood has ruined people's intelligence and made reading a thing for old people and nerds. Wuthering Heights is AMAZING and the second half is just that...the second half of the story. The first part is Heathcliffs uprising and second is his downfall and the end is the hope for the future with Cathy and Hearton. Or maybe it's just because I've studied this book so much...idk. Classic literature takes close reading which people today find too difficult. I say suck it up and pay attention to what you read or else Hollywood wins again.

>52 summerbis:, summerbis, I don't mean to attack you here, but wow, that's kind of a militant response and kind of a dismissive one, especially given that there are plenty of intelligent, well-read, thoughtful people in the world (and on LT especially!) who think that these books are not as amazing as they have been made out to be. I count myself as both an old person (now that I've hit 30) and a nerd who loves reading. And I confess that, while I enjoyed reading both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, I do not find them to be above criticism. I do not think at all that a lack of love for these books reflects ruined intelligence, careless reading, or a "Hollywood mentality" among readers.

I think its interesting how, in general, the people criticizing books on the Awful Lit discussion board tend to have very well-thought out positions or explanations as to why they didn't "get" a particular work, but (again, in general) the people who defend these works generally don't bother to state why they love them - they simply say that the books in question are wonderful and express irritation that anyone would dare criticize these books or their author. To me, this does not constitute a well-reasoned argument in favor of something, and, had I not already read these books, I would not be convinced to read them. I wish that when people responded in favor of books in this forum, they would actually mount an argument, rather than just implying that people who don't "get" the book in question are too stupid or lazy to understand it.

Apologies if I've offended, but I myself was rather offended in the first place.

#53 (an others)
*hangs head ashamedly* I didn't mean to be rude. I suppose you are right about people not supporting their love for a book. And I am well aware that many LT-ers are intelligent people. I guess I just like old literature better than the average person.
Now then-
Reasons to read the Bronte sisters:
1. Amazing stories
2. Wonderful books to be introduced to new vocab (if you're a word hound)
3. Much of their style was experimental for their time period (especially for female writers) so it's something to appreciate in their works if you can't enjoy the characters etc.
4. Wuthering Heights characters are extremely deep if the reader pays attention (not that you all haven't if you've read it).
5. If you dislike/hate them and you write it's a what not to do or a what to do better.
There are so many reasons; I could go all day.
But anyhoo...I thought I would try to support my love for the Bronte's a bit rather than just proclaiming said love. :-)

>54 summerbis:, Thanks for following up, summerbis! I hope I didn't make you feel too bad! Friends? ;)

It's all good. I could understand how people could be offended by my words. Anyway my friends do say I can be too blunt if ever that was possible. jk. Anyway...friends it is.