Eyre and Rochester
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography ‘edited by Currer Bell’ (Charlotte Brontë), was published in 1847 and became an immediate success, and is to this day a popular choice around the world amongst readers, whether they fly solo or discuss it in groups.
The story of Jane Eyre is as classic a Bildungsroman as they come: an orphan, placed with an unjust aunt who begrudgingly makes a promise to her husband on his deathbed to keep her safe, is shipped off to a (horrible) charity school to toil and endure a bleak faith in the temperamental English countryside. Very Brontëesque, the weather plays a symbolic role in this constancy of inner and outer rebellion and feelings of injustice across the board. Injustice as to the way you treat an orphan, injustice as to how you educate children, not with pedagogical means but terror and the fear of an avenging God imprinted on their minds. And most of all injustice to women, how their station and role in life is predetermined and how this constantly and thoroughly impairs their independence.
As a young woman, Eyre leaves the school to become a governess for a little French girl at (da-da-da-da) Thornfield Hall, where dark and enigmatic master Rochester sits by the fire challenging this fresh and untainted, yet determined, addition to the house. Eyre becomes more and more infatuated by this Master – not just as you would expect in a romantic fashion, but more importantly as an equal. In the course of the story events and eerie sounds around the house, however, make her question daily life at Thornton Hall, and the peak of events which will send her spiraling in a new direction is just around the corner…
So what does Charlotte do when she does what she does to you and me through Jane?
For one thing there is a constant toying with perspective. The narrator (Jane) every so often directs her speech at you, involves you in the scenes, breaking down the wall between her life as a series of events and your comfortable situation as voyeur. She disarms you by presenting herself as a plain, working woman – let your guard down, no threat here, feel free to read on – but in reality the very fact that she is NOT that, is fascinating and, I think, part of the reason she gets under your skin as a narrator. The reader is not just a spectator, but one who lives through and with the narrators’ situation. She guides you through the story, and you build up a sort of special interconnection between you and her because of this narrative change.
This way, it’s like I, being the reader here, can invest emotions and bond with the experience on another level than the laid-back reader, cruising in and out of the pages. I know it sounds cliché, but examining the emotional/moral/ethical levels of the story, you are there in the moment, and the moment may as well be 2012 as 1847.
And this leads me to another interesting aspect, which is the philosophical discussions Eyre and Rochester spend many a page debating, as well as the many layered and complex issues otherwise presented throughout the novel. Unlike your ‘tacky’ romance novels with very little to offer on the contemplative side, Jane Eyre is not merely a story of two people from different standings in life that end up emotionally and passionately attached. For sure there is that too – and descriptions of their emotional connection in spite of their stature reaches toe cringing cheese-levels at times (just remember it’s mid-1800’s literature). But Brontë still manages to interlace this rather corroded theme with sharp socioeconomic critique, the question of human value and equality of the sexes in a 19th century melting pot that might just as well apply to current debates. What does it mean to be a responsible and ethical person, and how do the theoretical high-level terms of intellect and reason stand up when you have to get up from your chaise longue and apply them to daily life choices.
To me Brontë presents us with a type of girl who grows up to be a combination type of heroic-stoic-plain woman, hellbent on questioning these power plays, and notions of justice, meticulously picking her battle grounds and rhetorical weapons, and in just the ‘right’ situations answers them with a kindness that verges on the point of sacrificial behaviour. But she is not without fault, nor is she the self-sacrificer per excellence. Eyre is Rochester’s redemption, but not on his terms as one would expect in the power display that is very evident from the first meeting on. Jane is very much her own, an Individual – not property, or a mere employee. In the character of Jane Eyre we are presented with someone who is very much aware of the injustice towards her, and signs of power plays that complicate the notion of simply ‘getting along’ and respecting your fellow human: be it child, man, woman, peasant, servant, they all face unjust authority plays, lain on them by a system, other people or most challenging of all: one’s self.
Of course, many of the choices and situations throughout the book are irrevocably connected to religion or religious rhetoric/ethics – more precisely the Christian faith – and so issues of self-sacrifice, redemption and belief in a just power higher than that we can experience from any personal and worldly gain are abound. Nonetheless there are what I would deem to be universal humanistic features that go against that pious attitude displayed by for instance St. John, a clergyman with whom she does the epic battle of wills with: can she, a plain governess, really turn down marriage that will be based on duty to God? It comes down to a core element of proto-feminism: the fundamental right to decide one’s faith and worth.
I could highlight many more points, whole sections of dialogue in fact, that tickles my brainstem. It says something about the test of times, when you think of the language which is altmodisch in general, and yet manages to suck in a 21. century reader just as easy as modern-day narratives. And I know that many too have had this experience of immersion I have had with Jane Eyre, in spite of different time periods, and antiquated language, when I mention the book, and another replies ‘aahh, Reader, I married him‘, and smiles in the sort of ‘we-share-the-same-experience’-way.
Closed doors, open windows and all that jazz
Wow, middle of April my optimistic self! It’s been so long since my last update, I don’t know how to pick it up again.
I handed in my thesis on fanfiction in the beginning of April – such a weird feeling, just letting go of a 6-month project with no opportunity of making revisions. For a whole week after I made mental notes, questioned my thesis in my dreams and woke up with argumentative sentences flying around my head like cartoon birds after a knock-out 🙂 Did you know the whole world could revolve around fanfiction, I mean everything is connected to fanfiction, it truly is!!! (deactivate looney blip).
After all the bubbly and strawberry tarts and good wishes and waking up beside myself, I went on a three-week siesta to Seattle, self-claimed coffee-capital of the world. And they do make a lot of coffee and a lot of good coffee. I sat around in café’s (made a rookie failure and went into a Starbuck’s on my very first day – I blame the jet lag), drank latte’s and mocha’s and read Virginia Woolf essays and researched some more fanfiction, until my boyfriend was kind enough to tell me that I didn’t need to research anymore; I was done. What a blow! I was ready to pull out my “we are not in the 50’s anymore and I will not be reduced to a cand.mag.-housewife”-talk, but good thing for him a well hidden smile crept up right after that, or I might have had to go all Amazonian warrior feminist on his ph.d.-expected arse! I must admit; I have had my doubts about the truly bipolar experience the American lifestyle would be to experience. But to see just how friendly everyone was, I feel ashamed. Ashamed! I say. I mean, the bus driver greats you at the door, people thank him for the ride. Even snooty hipsters in Seattle are more friendly than your local CPH-porridge-eating-hipster…
Anyways, three days after I landed in CPH from a three-week trip to Seattle, I again took off on a very exciting mission that took me to that little blip in the North Atlantic Ocean known as the Faroe Islands. And guess what?! I just landed my first grown-up job!!! Seriously, I kid you not, it is possible for a humanist to get a job before spending at least six months on the dole and bottle slash park bench. I will tell you all about the job in my next post, but suffice to say, I am over the moon and then some!
So this is just my official “I-will-resume-my-blogging-now-!” post. Have a fabulous Tuesday!
Break
The blog has been put on the back burner until I have handed my thesis on fanfic in.
Be back in the middle of April.
Love J. (read it how you like it)
A circular motion towards memory
A mind and a memory
Did I already read this passage? He used that same sentence before didn’t he? What? Is there a code in this text?
I’ve been reading Bjørn Rasmussen’s ‘Huden er det elastiske hylster der omgiver hele kroppen’ (‘The skin is the elastic holster that enshrouds the entire body’ – although in effect, due to the massive connotation linked to every word, the translation is open-ended) and in its best postmodern fashion it resists me and my desire to immerse myself in its story. Not to say it is a closed off piece of literature, on the contrary, it lays it all out there in rich condensed prose. However, it does what it can to resist me by saying “hey! I’m a text! I’m a text and I’m a person! I am a narrator and a text and a person! Only, there is no I, I is just a figment in a circular motion towards memory!”
And so it goes on, until I let go of my desire to establish a communication with it and just let it tell me its story. ‘Cause we really like that, and especially when we lose it; we like to communicate with texts and talk back, in essence often just to test out our own identity, mirror our own desires and fears. But this work, and others like it, just wants to tell its story, constantly trying to counteract what you think you already know about it, how it’s going to play out, what it wants. How? By saying it, and by borrowing others’ I’s and texts, and by negating your knowledge because it is not a You and even you don’t know You. The text, the I, can only present itself to a you and that’s that. What you do is either constantly trying to figure the It out, or just leave. No harm, no foul.
Tro intet af, hvad jeg fortæller om følelser. Jeg har kun tilnærmelsesvis ansatser mod at føle noget ægte. Så snart dette ægte indtræder, vil det nødvendigvis opløses, fortæl mig om implosion, om atomer. Når man jagter en frø i timevis, når man endelig lukker hænderne omkring den, dør den af chok. Og hvis jeg virkelig får dig en dag. Så vil jeg ikke have dig længere. Så vil jeg have noget andet. Hvad. Fortæl mig om forskellen på want og need, jeg tror ikke på, at der er nogen. Hvad er der så, kapitalismen, fortæl mig om kapitalismen, nej, den menneskelige natur, åh, hør her: Oppe i mit røvhul er der sort som kul, oppe i mit røvhul, ca. 6 cm. oppe, findes et punkt, en erogen zone, der svarer til klitorissen eller pikhovedet. Det er fakta. Når dette punkt berøres, forplanter vibrationerne sig til rygraden, hammeren, stigbøjlen og hør her: Røvhullet er dialektisk, røvhullet er en død mands blomst, død kvindes blomst, røvhullet er en fuga, et tema med variationer; følelser derimod; frøer, mødre, ridelærere og følelser, de er den samme gamle historie, sut mit plot.
(Roughly translated)
Don’t believe anything I say about feelings. Far from it, I only have beginnings of feeling something real. As soon as this real comes around it inevitably dissolves, talk to me about implosion, about atoms. When you chase a frog for hours, when you finally wrap your hands around it, it will die of shock. And if I really get you one day. Then I don’t want you anymore. Then I’ll want something else. What. Talk to me about the difference between want and need, I don’t think there is any. What’s next, capitalism, tell me about capitalism, no, human nature, ah listen: It is pitch-black up my asshole, up my asshole, about 6 cm. up, there is a point, an erogenous zone, comparable to the clitoris or the penis head. That’s a fact. When you touch this point the vibrations transmit to the spine, the malleus, the stirrups and listen: The asshole is dialectical, the asshole is a dead man’s flower, a dead woman’s flower, the asshole is a fugue, a theme with variations; feelings, on the other hand; frogs, mothers, riding instructors and feelings, they are the same old story, suck my plot.
A body
‘Huden…’ presents this figure named Bjørn, this persona who experiences in reality an array of confusing ‘realities’, that of a sexual being, a victim (of himself), an offender, an identity(?), where the language and the narration join in in a mix of stream-of-consciousness, repetitions, fragmented sentences and scattered punctuation to convey a sense of loss and confusion, shifting the mood and POV’s every which way. There is ample reference to the corporeity of existence, the anatomy, bodily functions, and how emotions and sensations affect the body. The body has long held a strange position; it is both the most real and physical we can think of, and at the same time because/in spite of its obvious and common everyday functions it is constantly embellished, observed and scrutinized from a distance or functioning as a satirical/comical input to check our masked appearance. But in a lot of more recent works, the body is incorporated at a very hands-on level – the shit, pee and puke, reactions to external and internal factors that set off a chain effect that, although it is a very felt thing, we take for granted and with it the emotions, the mind that belongs to it. When you eat, you shit, and sometimes it hurts (depending on how much chili you had the day before). When you cry nonstop for 45 minutes, you get dehydrated and a headache to boot. And the works I am referring to – ‘Huden…’ being an example – don’t necessarily incorporate the body because of fascination of the grotesque or comical input, but because it IS, and when it is, what and how do you do with it? In stead of spending time distancing ourselves from our skin, our blood and teeth, these works spend time incorporate it in the gorges of fiction. A very complex process because both the body and mind seem to constantly resist the being, moving forward and regressing all at the same time.
Of course, I could choose to focus on the massive amount of sexuality, sex (actions and thoughts) and what that means to societal evolution. I could also focus on the character and his relation/resemblance to the Author, is the author dead or very much alive? I could even focus on the symbolic effect of putting pictures, and at that in the dead center of the book, possibly as a form of legitimizing the linkage to reality or precisely to fuck with the whole notion that a photo would legitimize anything as real. All those aspects are fascinating for its own chain of thought. But when it comes down to it I keep coming back to the circular motion of mind and body towards memory and reality.
Others said:
Metro Literature
If you forgot your book, your mp3-player, your smartphone, your laptop, your magazine, in conclusion yourself, on the Copenhagen Metro there is always an alternative solution to staring at the punch-date on your ticket coupon ’til you go blind. As proponents of happy, smiley customers (adding a bit of branding techniques inspired by the bastard of humanities ideology) the Metro company is kind enough to include literature as one of their services starting in the dark and wet hours of November (who even likes November, it’s the middle child of blah and irk) – I do apologize for the now apparent, even to me, snarly tone. I don’t know where it came from, I promised myself to be positive. Anyways, the Metro Company, in cooperation with Subway Letteratura, has put up a cardboard box (called Literary Jukeboxes) filled with 13 young authored, contest-won stories at the metro stations, under the spiffy name Metro Literature. The goal, as is written on Metro Literature’s webpage, is to “promote the creation and reading of high quality literature by circulating the Jukeboxes and other means and events.” What those other means and events are, is unclear to me at this point, but they also state that response has been overwhelming, and this project will give both young authors a forum for presenting works, and readers the insight in the “latest trends of prose and poetry.” I don’t find it surprising that there is a heavy response to a contest; people love contests, authors need outlets, and it is an exciting way for young people to live out their fantasies in the search of their own identity. And yay for that, and yay for fantasy and identity searches.
However, I chose to remain skeptical for a little while of the project itself, because I have a problem with the believability of the sender and applicability of intention. Granted, for the contest itself there has been a jury set up of authors, a translator, a graphic designer, a literary agent and a publisher. But communication-wise the sender is after all still a transportation service, not even close, in my mind, to a cultural intermediary, and there are just so many easy ways to shoot this “we-wanna-be-part-of-the-trendsetters-with-our-innovative-approaches-to-culture”-ideology down. I love public transportation, it’s a good service in itself, and I am all for the notion of interactive spaces, where urban life shows itself as a living organism. I just think there are fine examples of circumventing the traditional route in public spaces for texts and authors, whose innovative playfulness shows plentiful these days without playing into the hands of metro companies and McDonald’s joints. It causes unnecessary muddling of communication lines and in some cases reception-fatigue. It will come to no surprise that I don’t think it should be in the hands of these companies – not to say they should be excluded, it just doesn’t seem to be a cooperation of the creative and economic forces, more like the latter acting as patron, 14th century style, to the former which gives me the shingles. I will say about the participants in the Metro Literature project that the writing in itself is not bad as such in the pamphlets I’ve read – I just think it is a shame that their stories are placed in a transitory setting with a dubious co-sender, where their contribution becomes more of a read, throwaway and non-contemplatory contribution in urbanity’s many visual and textual offers. And the texts don’t question their place or role in this setting or themselves as texts, so in reality they are merely reproducing the chain of recyclable written material which is lost in and to the crowd immediately after publication. Maybe that also explains my fault in the matter – I can’t transcend the setting/sender.
In contrast to this project there is a project called Ordskælv! It is inspired by and draws information from author Dave Eggers‘ non-profit project in San Francisco, 826 Valencia, and has been initiated by local organization Hygge Factory, organized by the local library and school with support from different other institutions, including The Ministry of Culture. Ordskælv! encouraged young people from 2200 Nørrebro (Copenhagen) to write and illustrate their own stories in 2200 words – performing in essence a collective conceptual work – and in 2010 they published their writings in a book called ‘2200 N – orakler, shawarmaer og bristede fordomme’ (2200 N – oracles, shawarma’s and burst prejudice’). The book is a chance for youths in Nørrebro to use their creative talent in telling their story and show others the plethora of lifestyles and -choices that Nørrebro has to offer when, for the most part, Nørrebro is branded as a troubled part of Copenhagen. Hygge Factory has continued this work in Ordskælv! 2012, where youths write essays about losing a loved one and will be publishing their works in cooperation with artists who will illustrate each writer’s essay in March. As it is a project originating in, and funded by, institutions such as libraries and schools, we must not forget that there is a matter of learning curve to be included in the success criteria. But I would nonetheless deem this to be a far favorable milieu for creative exercise and supportive community than the usual notion of writers in their ivory towers.
The participants make all decisions on layout and content with the help of volunteers who offer a wide field of competences to the youths, from creative writing, to publishing. As such they are actively involved in the collective process, which appeals to me greatly, and they get a sense of ownership that transcends any isolated participation as I would imagine the Metro competition has been.
