#the autobiography of jane eyre

[heatherfield]

♪ Being a ghost, soliloquies, doll tea parties. Then I'll etch Jane Eyre's sketch, drink some wine, rip a dress! ♪

Bertha's Attic Song (2014) [x]

Bonus:

[panneshirley]

giftober 2023 | day 7: water

call me katie / project green gables / twelfth grade (or whatever) / project dashwood / the autobiography of jane eyre / lovely little losers

[buddyhollyscurls]

So in rewatching the LBD and watching the Autobiography of Jane Eyre for the first time, I have to say I think I like JE's more natural even shaky approach to filming the eps. I feel that LBD is a bit too polished at times plus, we really miss out on other characters' viewpoints. I know that's the Point bc this is her diary and as Lydia once said, "Lizzie sees what she wants to see," but part of what makes P+P so great is that tho we see the world through Lizzie's eyes we're also able to gather info from other character's that help shape our own conclusions. PLUS WE REALLY REALLY MISSED OUT ON HOW OFTEN DARCY JUST STARES AT LIZZIE. like can u imagine if during her and Jane's stay at Netherfield when their house "was under construction" Lizzie decided to record while they had dinner or hung out and in the background, u saw Darcy just fixated on her and smiling to himself while she's recording completely unbeknownst to her and she doesn't even mention it

[heatherfield]

At home:

Incorrect Quotes: Jane Eyre (70/?)

Source

[blithe-and-bonnyy]

the way i miss the fanmix and gif edits era of the liw fandom

[haggishlyhagging]

In 1847 the stereotypes for male and female writers were very rigid. Critics expected from a male writer strength, passion, and intellect, and from a woman writer they expected tact, refinement, and piety. They depended on these stereotypes so much, in fact, that they really didn't know how to proceed, what to say, or what to look for in a book if they were unsure of the author's sex.

So Jane Eyre created a tremendous sensation, and it was a problem for the Brontës. The name Currer Bell could be that of either a man or a woman and the narrator of Jane Eyre is Jane herself. The book is told as an autobiography. These things suggested that the author might have been a woman. On the other hand, the novel was considered to be excellent, strong, intelligent and, most of all, passionate. And therefore, the critics reasoned, it could not be written by a woman, and if it turned out that it was written by a woman, she had to be unnatural and perverted.

The reason for this is that the Victorians believed that decent women had no sexual feelings whatsoever—that they had sexual anesthesia. Therefore, when Jane says about Rochester that his touch "made her veins run fire, and her heart beat faster than she could count its throbs," the critics assumed this was a man writing about his sexual fantasies. If a woman was the author, then presumably she was writing from her own experience, and that was disgusting. In this case we can clearly see how women were not permitted the authority of their own experience if it happened to contradict the cultural stereotype.

But even more shocking than this to the Victorians was Jane's reply to Rochester, a very famous passage in the novel. He has told her he is going to marry another woman, an heiress, but that she can stay on as a servant. Jane answers him thus:

"I tell you I must go," I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton, a machine without feeling and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I'm soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should've made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionality, nor even of mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God's feet equal—as we are."

This splendid assertion violated not only the standards of sexual submission, which were believed to be women's duty and their punishment for Eve's crime, but it also went against standards of class submission, and obviously against religion. And this sort of rebellion was not feminine at all.

The reviews of Jane Eyre in 1847 and 1848 show how confused the critics were. Some of them said Currer Bell was a man. Some of them, including Thackeray, said a woman. One man, an American critic named Edgar Percy Whipple, said the Bells were a team, that Currer Bell was a woman who did the dainty parts of the book and brother Acton the rough parts. All kinds of circumstantial evidence were adduced to solve this problem, such as the details of housekeeping. Harriet Martineau said the book had to be the work of a woman or an upholsterer. And Lady Eastlake, who was a reviewer for one of the most prestigious journals, said it couldn't be a woman because no woman would dress her heroines in such outlandish clothes.

Eventually Charlotte Brontë revealed her identity, and then these attacks which had been general became personal. People introduced her as the author of a naughty book; they gossiped that she was Thackeray's mistress. They speculated on the causes of what they called "her alien and sour perspective on women." She felt during her entire short life that she was judged always on the basis of what was becoming in femininity and not as an artist.

-Elaine Showalter, ‘Women Writers and the Female Experience’ in Radical Feminism, Koedt et al (eds.)

[gwydpolls]

Lucian's Library

Feel free to suggest never written books you wish you could read.

[jackiestarsister]

Thoughts while rereading Jane Eyre

I first read Jane Eyre in its entirety when I was in high school, and it has remained one of my all-time favorite books! After reading the Manga Classics adaptation and seeing both the old and new editions of the stage musical, I finally reread it, or rather listened to the audiobook.

These were my thoughts on this reading (with spoilers):

~ Jane’s autobiography begins with the line, “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” I take this to mean that if she had taken a walk that day, none of the following events would have happened! John Reed would not have attacked her at that time and place, leading to her traumatic punishment, her meeting with Mr. Lloyd, and going to Lowood Institution.

~ Charlotte Bronte vividly shows the intensity of children’s emotions. I don’t think that was common in British literature at the time!

~ Jane enters and leaves the lives of the Reeds, the Thornfield residents, and the Rivers siblings in very Gothic fashions! I can imagine parts of the story being told from other characters’ perspectives to great dramatic effect.

~ Knowing the whole story, there are many seeds of foreshadowing to be found throughout the story! Great setup and payoff.

~ Jane says about Helen’s grave, “for fifteen years after her death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble tablet marks the spot.” Jane must have gone back to Lowood when she was about 25, and paid for a fitting monument for her first and life-changing friend!

~ Pilot seems almost like a Disney hero’s sidekick, urging the two love interests to meet each other!

~ Mr. Rochester seems to judge Jane’s character partly by observing how she treats Pilot and Adele, and the contrast against Blanche Ingram’s treatment of them!

~ If Eliza and Georgiana are supposed to represent the extremes of unfeelingness and too effusive feelings, are they basically Eleanor and Marianne Dashwood? I know Charlotte Bronte disliked Pride and Prejudice; maybe she was pushing back against Austen’s other characters too?

~ Rochester actually calls Jane the “adopted daughter” of Mrs. Fairfax and “little English mother” of Adele! I wish this familial dynamic had been brought out more.

~ The impulsive way Jane flees from Thornfield reminds me that she is still a teenager! She does not think of the fact that she has an uncle who wants to give her an inheritance, or of the solicitor’s advice to stay put until she hears news of him. She does not seek help from Mrs. Fairfax or the Leavens family to find a new situation. She might have spared herself a lot of suffering if she had formed a better plan for finding a new home and had her mail forwarded there!

~ St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers are like a reversed reflection of John, Eliza, and Georgiana Reed—both sets of cousins, but completely opposite dynamics with Jane.

~ Jane’s relationship with St. John Rivers is waaaay more toxic than her relationship with Edward Rochester. Jane can stand her ground with Rochester, who would never force her to do anything she decidedly did not want; but she feels compelled to do whatever St. John tells her, and he urges her to do things against her own desires.

~ Rochester literally loses his eye and hand, just like Jesus says about temptation in Matthew 18:8-9!

~ Jane and Rochester’s relationship is bookended by scenes of her supporting him as he walks!

~ Were the parson and clerk who officiated Jane and Rochester’s marriage the same ones who were at the interrupted wedding?! Unless there was a change in position during the year of separation, they probably were the same ones!

~ My headcanon is that all the Thornfield servants placed bets on how long it would take Jane and Rochester to work things out. This is supported by the innkeeper’s account of how the servants observed Jane and Rochester, and John and Mary’s reactions after they finally get married!

[gatheringbones]

best books of 2022 rec list:

fiction:

chouette by claire oshetsky

forty thousand in gehenna by cj cherryh

fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom

sula by toni morrison

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin

jane eyre by charlotte bronte

villette by charlotte bronte

non-fiction:

gay spirit by mark thompson

we too: stories on sex work and survival by natalie west

transgender history by susan stryker

blood marriage wine & glitter by s bear bergman

love and rage: the path to liberation through anger by lama rod owens

gay soul by mark thompson

between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up in the AIDS crisis by mattilda bernstein sycamore

the man they wanted me to be: toxic masculinity and a crisis of our own making by jared yates sexton

nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity by mattilda bernstein sycamore

cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime by alex espinoza

gay body by mark thompson

what my bones know: a memoir of healing from complex trauma by stephanie foo

the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption by kathryn joyce

the opium wars: the addiction of one empire and the corruption of another by w. travis hanes III

a queer history of the united states by michael bronski

the trouble with white women by kyla schuller

what we don't talk about when we talk about fat by aubrey gordon

the feminist porn book by tristan taormino

administrations of lunacy: a story of racism and psychiatry at the midgeville asylum by mab segrest

the women's house of detention by hugh ryan

angela davis: an autobiography by angela davis

ten steps to nanette by hannah gadsby

neuroqueer heresies by nick walker

the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare by zena sharman

brilliant imperfection by eli clare

the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by david graeber and david wengrow

tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel

all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence by emily l. thuma

if this is a man by primo levi

bi any other name: bisexual people speak out by lorraine hutchins

white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson

public sex: the culture of radical sex by pat califa

I'm glad my mom died by jenette mccurdy

care of: letters, connections and cures by ivan coyote

the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman

skid road: on the frontier of health and homelessness in an american city, by josephine ensign

the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt

nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm by robin diangelo

corrections in ink by keri blakinger

sexed up: how society sexualizes us and how we can fight back by julia serano

smash the church, smash the state! the early years of gay liberation by tommi avicolli mecca

no more police: a case for abolition by mariame kaba

until we reckon: violence, mass incarceration, and a road to repair by danielle sered

the care we dream of: liberatory & transformative justice approaches to LGBTQ+ health by zena sharman

reclaiming two-spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal and sovereignty in native america by gregory d. smithers

the sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by Caits Meissner

[hazellvsq]

the problem is that piper belongs in a late 90s/early 2000s grungy character-driven tv drama (my so called life, freaks and geeks, dawson’s creek, daria) and hazel belongs in a subversive gothic novel (jane eyre, passing, autobiography of my mother, wide sargasso sea) and jason belongs with the original argonauts. i think rick did understand this on some level but had trouble incorporating this into his own writing style.

[femmesandhoney]

any book recommendations? not even just feminist literature (...though that's good too)

love your blog!

Fiction

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, PJO, and Shadowhunter series by Cassandra Clare are classic beloved YA for me. Maggie Stief is my favorite author tho like she solos everyone else here

Jane Eyre by Brontë

JKR's Cormoran Strike series

Ninth House by Leigh Burdugo

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown

A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab

Autobiographies

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Non Fiction and other

If We Burn by Vincent Bevins

Quiet by Susan Cain

Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik

Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam

The Russian Revolution by Shiela Fitzpatrick

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

The American Revolution by James Bogg

Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

[mylittledarkag3]

How many have you read out of the hundred?

Me: 64/100

Reblog & share your results

1. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

2. "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

4. "1984" by George Orwell

5. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

6. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez

7. "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

8. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

9. "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

10. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

11. "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville

12. "The Odyssey" by Homer

13. "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë

14. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

15. "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

16. "The Iliad" by Homer

17. "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

18. "Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo

19. "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes

20. "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

21. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

22. "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

23. "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

24. "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

25. "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" by Victor Hugo

26. "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells

27. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

28. "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer

29. "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James

30. "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling

31. "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

32. "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri

33. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

34. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka

35. "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen

36. "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas

37. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury

38. "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift

39. "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

40. "Emma" by Jane Austen

41. "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe

42. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy

43. "The Republic" by Plato

44. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

45. "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Arthur Conan Doyle

46. "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

47. "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli

48. "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

49. "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

50. "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

51. "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

52. "The Plague" by Albert Camus

53. "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

54. "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov

55. "The Red and the Black" by Stendhal

56. "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway

57. "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

58. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

59. "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

60. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

61. "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle

62. "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins

63. "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

64. "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson

65. "Ulysses" by James Joyce

66. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe

67. "Vanity Fair" by William Makepeace Thackeray

68. "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett

69. "Walden Two" by B.F. Skinner

70. "Watership Down" by Richard Adams

71. "White Fang" by Jack London

72. "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

73. "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A.A. Milne

74. "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor

75. "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" by Margaret Fuller

76. "Women in Love" by D.H. Lawrence

77. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig

78. "The Aeneid" by Virgil

79. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton

80. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

81. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu

82. "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" by Benjamin Franklin

83. "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin

84. "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler

85. "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

86. "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk

87. "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov

88. "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok

89. "The Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens

90. "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau

91. "The Clue in the Crumbling Wall" by Carolyn Keene

92. "The Code of the Woosters" by P.G. Wodehouse

93. "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

94. "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas

95. "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller

96. "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon

97. "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown

98. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Leo Tolstoy

99. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon

100. "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" by Rebecca Wells

[theroseandthebeast]

Yuletide Recs, Batch Three

16 recs for The Eagle, Earthsea, Emma., The Expanse, The Faculty, The Fall of the House of Usher, Fallen London, The Green Knight, The Handmaiden, Jane Eyre, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and The Matrix

Between Two Rivers, Marcus Flavius Aquila & Esca Mac Cunoval

Two rivers. Two near kisses.

The White Ladies of the Ring, Penthe/Tenar

There was a sorcerer imprisoned in the Labyrinth, and Arha had told Kossil that she would kill him—but she did not want to. Perhaps she needed to ask someone for help...

My Queen Bee, George Knightley/Emma Woodhouse

Emma went on, brightly, “I have spoken with Harriet about it.” George blinked. He was fast losing his grip on this conversation. 

We aren't righteous (or: five times Amos did as Naomi asked, and one time he didn't.), Gen, Amos Burton & Naomi Nagata

For EdosianOrchids901 for Yuletide, who asked for Amos and Naomi and suggested something pre-canon, something about that dynamic where he sees her as an external moral compass, and how their friendship developed. This is mostly pre-canon, overlapping with canon in the last two parts. (Also it's been a while since I've seen this so apologies in advance if I've missed something in research and inadvertently contradicted canon on their immediate pre-canon backstories!)

Pyriscence, Gen, Amos Burton & Praxidike Meng

After the war with the Free Navy, Amos comes to see Prax.

What do you do when you survive a shape-shifting mind-controlling alien as a teen?, Stokely Mitchell/Stan Rosado

Twenty years later, Stokely and Stan arrive back in each other's lives.

the miraculous lustre of her eye, Madeline Usher/Verna

"If she wants Madeline fucking Usher, she's going to have to look me straight in the eyes."

a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Gen, Verna + Arthur Pym

Arthur Pym's first meeting with Verna.

The Margin, Gen, Verna + Arthur Pym

“We have to go back,” Arthur Pym said, teeth rattling in the wind. He clutched the ragged edges of his coat closer. “Ship can’t break through that ice. We’ll founder.” -- The first time Verna and Arthur met, on the Transglobe Expedition.

by such dreaming high, Gen, The Duchess + The Roseate Queen

It is summer, in a fallen city; and someone, somewhere, is doing something unwise...

The Half-Seen Door, Gen, Piranesi | Matthew Rose Sorensen + Sixteen | Sarah Raphael + Gawain

It’s a hard job, coming home.

leverage and its utility, Fujiwara + Original Female Character(s)

The three he smoked in the carriage ride here was nothing but a gamble. A roll of the die, a flip of a coin, a dealing of cards. Lucky for him, luck is in his favor.

lilacs out of the dead land, Jane Eyre/Edward Rochester

I had, within me, that rich world of imagination that I could always retreat to, and so I transformed myself.

All Earthly Happiness, Jane Eyre/Edward Rochester

Reader, I lied. Or, rather, I omitted. As the mother of daughters, who had openly declared their intentions of reading my autobiography, I was hesitant to paint a full picture of the course of my first engagement to my dear Edward. Although in many ways it did progress much as I described, discretion prevented absolute disclosure

When It's Worth It, Gen, Arthur + The Mage

The chilly air tasted of dust and lightning strikes and the faint iron tang of blood, and there were still all too many questions lingering unanswered.

dissolved girl, Neo/Trinity

What if Trinity came back wrong? A post-Matrix Resurrections fic about what happens if the body was rebuilt again, and again, and again, and in the remaking, became something new.

[buddyhollyscurls]

They made Jane a Tumblr girlie!

[thatscarletflycatcher]

I'm interested in Jane Eyre (cool gifsets help, ngl) but what I know of the plot keeps putting me off. I'm not looking for fiction to be some version of moral superiority and I don't mind plots where Bad And Terrible Things Happen. I think the bits I know of this book maybe just hit the squicky spot for me? But, like, everyone's read it and if it's worth pushing through with, I guess...I'd like to know what you think makes it worth reading.

Hi, anon, and sorry for the delay.

I think Jane Eyre is a fascinating book.

It is, of all the Brontë sisters books I have read (with Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) the most fantastic and sweeping one*. That's why I usually call it "pulpy": it indulges in the emotions, its prose is beautiful, the plot goes from Dickensian misery to stern didactics to silliness to bonkers drama to psychological horror and a mystical reunion and happily ever after. And the most fascinating part is that, while Charlotte Brontë was known for her careful almost obsessive care in her choice of words, and some of the contrasts and foils are evident, a lot of the time I'm not sure all that one can read in the text is intentional. I'm half persuaded that a lot of its silliness was written in deep serious earnest. Intentionally or not, there's a lot to be read into the text, from several different angles, because the point of view from which it is written is very strong.

Another reason to read it is because it has inspired and keeps inspiring so much of what is written in romance and romance fanfic (I joke that about 70% of all P&P fanfic is some vague variation on Jane Eyre), and yet the tropes and characterizations derived from it are heavily distorted (the principled heroine becomes the stubborn stupid heroine, the conflicted idiot hero is turned into an asshole with a sad backstory, love not being enough to fix the hero becomes the hero is fixed by the love of the heroine... the list goes on).

Not knowing what your specific squicks are, it's difficult to tell how much worth the effort it is or not to you. In any case, it is a book in the public domain so you can get it in places like Project Gutenberg or Wikisource for free, give it a try, and see how far you can go.

I have two tips that might help: while romance is very important in this novel, it is by its own definition, an autobiography. It is the life journey of Jane Eyre and what she learns in the way as she grows and interacts with other people. I believe it is at its core message a story about breaking cycles of abuse through mercy and forgiveness, about the cruelty of mankind and the love of Divine Providence that writes straight on crooked lines. That's usually my problem with the "but, girl, he had a wife in the attic!!" brand of criticism. We know. It's a major plot point in the novel. It's a very significant thing that happens and all that is misguided and bad in it has serious consequences. "But in real life...!" this is a novel where the resolution hinges on two people having a ¿telepatic communication? ¿mystical selective amplification? while being many many miles apart. I don't think "realism" is much the thing with it. And in any case, "go away from the guy that lied to you until you become rich and he's smitten by God and you hear his telepatic call in the wind" is not the kind of example or advice that could do harm in real life (I'm half joking, I know what they mean. Still. It's fantastical).

*this does not mean it is the best one; just that the other two are far far more grounded stories, with less of the fairytale and the fantastic in them.