Jane Eyre Extravaganza
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
I have read Jane Eyre multiple times before, and every time I get something new out of it. The first time I was a teenager, and (somewhat unsurprisingly) I thought it was very romantic. This time, it was a deep and sort of surprising sympathy for poor Bertha, who may or may not have been mad when she went into the attic, but was certainly mad after that confinement. Being mentally ill myself, it was very difficult not to see myself in her position, and to feel personally attacked by Rochester's... everything. It was a much darker read this time around, is more or less what I'm saying.
For those of you unfamiliar with the book, Jane Eyre is the story of the titular character's coming of age, and somewhat incidentally her marriage. The first third of the book chronicles her upbringing, first in the house of her evil Aunt Reed with her evil Reed cousins and then at the Lowood School, where for the first time she meets sympathetic and interesting people. After her time is up at Lowood, she takes up a post as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she cares for Adele, befriends Mrs. Fairfax, and eventually meets her mysterious master, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester has a lot of secrets and some downright sociopathic tendencies, but this is a Bronte novel, so he's the hero.
Anyway, it's a very good book, I think, with great writing and a fantastic heroine, but it's also a very unsettling book, and not at all a straightforward romance.
Reader, I Married Him, edited by Tracy Chevalier
Now this was fun. Reader, I Married Him is a collection of short stories based off that single famous line in Jane Eyre, with topics ranging from Jane Eyre herself, complicating the narrative of the original book, to Wallis Simpson of all people (in honestly one of my favorite stories). There's a wide range of stories in this volume, which are almost universally of very high quality, if not always to my taste. Particular favorites for me included Grace Poole Her Testimony, To Hold, Since First I Saw Your Face (EMMA DONOGHUE), Reader I Married Him (the one about Wallis Simpson), The Mirror (fuck you Rochester) and The Orphan Exchange. But, again, these are all very good stories. Favorites will vary dependent on taste, and not quality. This, I think, is the mark of a good short story anthology.
Texts from Jane Eyre, by Mallory Ortberg and Madeline Gobbo
And now, plain silliness.
Texts from Jane Eyre is exactly what it says on the tin, though it also contains a whole lot of other characters. It's pretty hit or miss--Lord Byron's text messages, for example, were so spot-on hilarious that I made all of my roommates read them, but Keats sounded just... not like him and weird. Jane's were fairly in-character for her, I thought, very matter-of-fact in the face of Rochester's histrionics. I don't think this is the kind of book you own, but if you're into classic literature, pick it up at the library or something. It's worth a read.
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