Jane Eyre

Anonymous's picture

Jane Eyre is one of my five favorite books. I don’t know what the other four are, I just know that Jane Eyre is one of the top five.

I identify strongly with Jane. I know several other guys whose favorite book it is as well, and who identify with her.

In the current Norton Critical Edition (3rd, 2000) there is an essay on the book by the poet Adrienne Rich. It’s a great essay, but reading it you would assume that Jane Eyre was, if not strictly a “girls’ book,” then one that was overwhelmingly more meaningful to women readers than to men.

Now, it’s impossible to make objective judgments about subjective states of reading, but nonetheless I find it difficult to imagine that Jane Eyre is fundamentally more meaningful to another reader, just because that reader is a woman, than it is to me.

What do you think?

Gregory Knapp
Forums Editor

Leontes's picture

I'm with you: I love Jane,

I'm with you: I love Jane, and I dislike the "girls book" designation which seems to go to any book with a female heroine. It's not unusual--"Mark Twain" is American literature, "Sula" is African-American literature--but it's galling all the same. If this designation is annoying for readers, for writers it's pernicious: it reinforces the belief (which is tacit but powerful) that one is only supposed to create characters from within one's own subgroup or from the majority -- i.e. a Jewish man's protagonists ought to be Jewish or white, but not black, Chinese, Pakistani etc. It's a belittling of the imagination.

gregoryknapp's picture

Leontes: You raise an

Leontes:

You raise an excellent, broader, point.

It's similar to the debate (which I suppose is getting toward being settled, but I'm not in the theatre so I'm not sure) on colorblind casting in Shakespeare, or other canonical plays.

I'm not sure: has an African-American actor played Willy Loman in any major productions of Salesman?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Gregory Knapp
Forums Editor

NessaH's picture

Greg: I'm not certain about

Greg:

I'm not certain about an African-American Willy Loman (I think there is one being planned) but currently on Broadway is an all-black cast of "Cat on A Hot Tin Roof." I wonder what Tennessee Williams would say, the old Southerner. And Denzel Washington played Julius Caesar a few years ago.

Have you read "Stoner," by John Williams? I loved this book.

Nessa

gregoryknapp's picture

Nessa: Thanks for

Nessa:

Thanks for registering!

And thanks for the heads up on Stoner, of which I was not aware.

In general, it seems like the New York Review line is putting out some great stuff that might not be supported by a more commercial house.

As to colorblind casting: here in Chicago we have lots of theatre and lots of Shakespeare, and colorblind casting has more or less become the norm, I think.

I have observed that I have begun to take it for granted. Two years ago, now, I took a group of high schoolers to see Macbeth. It wasn't until one of my students asked me about it that I focused on the fact that the actor playing Macbeth was African-American.

I would assume on Broadway, where there's a lot more money at stake, progress is slower. I will read up on the current "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" production you mention.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Greg

NessaH's picture

Greg: On Broadway, if you're

Greg:

On Broadway, if you're a star, African-American or white or whatever - it sells. PDiddy in A Raisin In the Sun. I'm not really interested in discussing race on Broadway. In the theater, it's really not an issue any more. However. If Julius Caesar were portrayed by a woman! (A woman played Hamlet, though, at the Public Theater years ago. Diane Venora, I think.)

Anyway, I'm impressed and amazed that you love Jane Eyre. My blockhead, female thinking eliminates any possibility that a man would even read the thing. But looking back, it was my father who gave me the novel. And somehow it made all the difference. I was fourteen, ill, and home from school for six weeks. He brought me Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina (one of MY favorite books),Gone With The Wind, and Native Son. How fantastic was that!

Nessa

gregoryknapp's picture

I am in the middle of

I am in the middle of reading Jane Eyre, and so it is right in the front of my mind.  Where I am now (Jane is in the porcess of getting to know Mr. Rochester during their first evening talks at Thornfield) it strikes me that it is, among other things, primarily a novel about individual freedom and dignity.

 The key passage, so far, is in Chapter IV, when Jane finally speaks bluntly to Mrs. Reed: 

 

Speak I must; I had been trodden on severely, and must turn: but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence: -- 'I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.'