[ SECRET POST #3156 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3156 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.


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03.
[Spider Riders]


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04.
[Shameless]


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05.
[The Mighty Boosh]


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06.
[Glitch]


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07.
[Fire Emblem: Awakening]


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08.
[Kaikisen]


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09.
[Kingdom Hearts 2]


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10.
[Yu-Gi-Oh]














Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 029 secrets from Secret Submission Post #451.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Anyone who swoons over Rochester didn't get the point of the novel. Jane Eyre was meant to be a critique of women's status in society, classism, and how a relationship with someone like Rochester would actually be harmful. He's not a romantic character and he was never intended to be. As with the other main male characters in the story, he is there to be resisted, not heeded, as Jane attempts to find her place in society. Jane doesn't want to marry him until they can be more equal; his injuries at the end, which require Jane to become his caretaker, were perhaps the only way in Victorian society that that could be achieved.

I also can't help but notice that most, if not all, of the readers who think Rochester is so wonderful and romantic tend to focus on the upper-class surroundings and pretty dresses and completely disregard the portion of the novel where Jane is abused, poor, homeless, and has to beg for food. They also disregard Rochester locking his wife in the attic, and taking three mistresses - while still married to Bertha and pining for Jane - as he travels through Europe.

Readers who find Rochester to be an ideal are exactly the kind of readers whose tastes were being satirized. Nearly 170 years after first publication, they still haven't gotten it.

[(Anonymous)]

What's your opinion of Wuthering Heights?

[philstar22]

Ugh. Wuthering Heights. Readers who think Heathcliff is supposed to be romantic are wrong. It is still an awful book.

[(Anonymous)]

but without it we wouldn't have a top 5 Kate Bush song

[(Anonymous)]

No, it's a wonderful book if you let the big feelings take the lead role. Heathcliff and co is more like scenery and the drama is the big point.

[philstar22]

This is all subjective anyway. I personally hate it. I hate the writing style, I hate the plot, I hate the characters, and I can't think of a single thing I enjoyed about this book.

[meishuu]

glad to see I'm no the only one. Read it on my teens years and was "meh" about it. Re-read it on my 30s and was "holy shit this is awful"

[(Anonymous)]

da

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202

[(Anonymous)]

Of Charlotte and Emily compared to Anne: "... for the most part they kept their feminism off the page, focusing upon brutal male characters whose main appeal tended to be their potential for redemption. " (Guardian article about Anne Bronte)

[(Anonymous)]

How can anyone read Jane Eyre and think it's not feminist?

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe they care about women who are not British and have mental health problems, too?

[(Anonymous)]

NA

Brilliant novel about familial abuse. One of my favorite books ever.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

So well said that I have nothing to add, except my +1.

[dahli]

Woah.

Never read the book and was just going to ask if the narrative paints him as someone who was meant to be desirable, but this definitely answer my question. Now I really want to read the book haha.

[(Anonymous)]

That ending, though. I got that finally they were supposed to be more equal, so she married him. That always seemed willfully naive to me.

A man of Rochester's temperament, suddenly disabled? He'd be worse than ever and impossible to live with. Jane is a fool.

The Victorians seemed to have this ideal of the disabled as saintly people but that's very far from the case. They're just like everyone else, except they're more pissed off because they're disabled, especially if the change to their life has just been recent.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it was more that he finally learnt humility.

[arcadiaego]

She does conveniently say his sight is starting to return though so he hasn't been disabled permanently, just 'humbled' to a noble ideal, as you say.

[(Anonymous)]

Good comment, although I'm not sure about satirized.

[(Anonymous)]

Jane doesn't want to marry him until they can be more equal; his injuries at the end, which require Jane to become his caretaker, were perhaps the only way in Victorian society that that could be achieved."

Not exactly true. Jane could've been discovered to be a rich heiress in her own right via some rich guardian of a good family. That's basically the plot of Oliver Twist. What you're suggesting is that Rochester has to lose his house and become a scarred, blind invalid before he can be considered "equal" with a resourceful, smart, able-bodied woman with no fortune. Even Victorian times weren't that fucked up.

[(Anonymous)]

NA

"What you're suggesting is that Rochester has to lose his house and become a scarred, blind invalid before he can be considered "equal" with a resourceful, smart, able-bodied woman with no fortune. Even Victorian times weren't that fucked up."

FIFY. And yes it was.

[(Anonymous)]

I see what you're getting at and I don't entirely disagree, but you can't discount class issues in this context. If Jane had been the daughter of a duke, she would've been considered more than Rochester's social equal and would never have been as vulnerable as Jane the penniless orphan. Even if she'd been the daughter of an impoverished noble, she'd still have the cachet of her family name and breeding. A marriage with Rochester as he is at the end of the novel would've been a step down for her, not a marriage of equals.

My Bad

[(Anonymous)]

I confess I commented rather glibly on your previous comment, and was not actually following what had been said in the comments up until that point. Bad me. And yes, you are absolutely right, marrying him after having inherited twenty thousand pounds was a disastrously foolish thing for a woman in her era and position to do. Like, Jesus, Jane! You just couldn't legally sign that money away fast enough, could you?! Not to mention the substantial (though fundamentally insecure) latitude and empowerment possessed by a maiden woman from a family of peerage. (I'm a little unclear about whether her status would have served to socially elevate both herself and Rochester, upon marriage, or whether her status would have been entirely subsumed by his. I also can't recall what his social status was, though surely it was below "Duke" by any count.)

Further more, now that I see the comment you were replying to, I agree with you all the more. In my opinion, that anon is confusing "my favorite interpretation of this novel which I learned in literary criticism class" with "what is actually evident in the novel."

I myself do not see Jane Eyre as a feminist work (which is why The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is much ore my jam). In fact, I find the idea laughable. And while I don't find Rochester a romantic or appealing figure myself, I do recognize that in the era of the novel he probably fit the bill very well. For the era the novel was written in, I'd say he actually acquitted himself with a lot more generosity and consideration than would have been expected of him, sad as that is to say.

Re: My Bad

[(Anonymous)]

ETA: with regards to Rochester's status, I'd forgotten than because he is referred to as merely "Mr." he must not be a member of the peerage, as IIRC they are by custom to be referred to as "Sir" or, more formally, as "Duke/Marquis/Earl/etc." So yeah, definitely a step down for Jane on that one.

It's been a long while since I read the book, and I wasn't all that engaged by it at the time, but the more I think back, the more I remember how glad I was that Rochester was blind when she married him, ensuring that he remain relatively dis-empowered, and reliant on her.

[meishuu]

I don't like the book that much but yeah, I thought this was the whole point of the story. Very well said.