I don't know how we agreed upon Jane Eyre, but agree we did, instantaneously. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that we'd heard that people could be divided into two types: those who love Jane Eyre and those who love Wuthering Heights. I immediately declared myself on the side of the former, though I really didn't know what I was talking about. I hadn't read either book in years, but I'd been haunted by the opening chapters of Jane Eyre ever since I was teenager.
To the point: because of his eye surgery, Mark isn't allowed to read for the next week. (Those of you who are on Facebook know that he is cheating a bit, but we won't discuss that here.) What better time then to read a book aloud? When offering to read Jane Eyre aloud, I'd somehow forgotten it was 500+ pages, but we won't discuss that here. Today will be Day Three of reading. I believe we are up upon Chapter 6--page 64. The method: Two installments per day, a chapter at a time, the best way to take it all in.
I am learning a lot about what it takes to read a lengthy work aloud. When reading a poem aloud, or one of my own pieces aloud, I'm better able to think into the word, the syllable in front of me. I'm not holding back the fear (slight as it is) that I'm not going to have the stamina to get to the end. It is interesting to think of a block of pages as a block of time, real time, clock time. Reading a long book aloud to someone is not quite the same as reading a long book to oneself. I can't jump up and get a glass of water mid-paragraph. I can't get up to pee, or leap up to check my email just for the sake of checking my email. Oh, I suppose I could, but it would ruin things. It occurs to me that everything about the way we live now (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, texting) wants to undo that kind of extended verbal immersion.
But what a wonder Jane Eyre is. Not just the book, but Jane Eyre herself. Wounded and very strong, suffering and defiant. Funny, I hadn't remembered how funny the book was, in a dark way. I was reading the passage below the other night, and I had stop for a minute, the way one has to pause, hang back when one is reading an emotional text in front of a group. There's nothing sentimental about this passage, even vaguely so. And I'm not even sure I was on the verge of welling up because I was identifying with the narrator's recognition that the Beloved Book had emptied out on her. If anything, I was awakened by writing itself, by clarity: another human voice making use of my tongue, my teeth, my breathing.
***
From Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly-painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rose-buds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favor; coming, like most other favors, long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded. I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight; I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales; for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England to some savage country, where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant: whereas Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds, of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.
16 comments:
A few years ago, Edward reread Jane Eyre and was so enthusiastic I immediately reread it too--and we nearly never read novels like that. I love that book so much (& have never read Wuthering Heights, actually).
After my heart, you two. Of course.
(Though Mark just said, "Get cracking on Wuthering Heights. I said!")
Jane Eyre in a new filming, said to be very true to the novel, is out soon. With Judi Densch as Mrs. Fairfax!!!
That first section of Eyre is really quite something. Until I saw your excerpt, I had forgotten how beautifully descriptive of both inner and outer life it is.
Great Expectations, is also marvelous sick room reading.
And Yes, Ms. McCracken...do get crackin'
That sounds great, that new film version. You're right: it's amazingly interior and so smart when it comes to understanding the relationships between the powerful and powerless--and the slipperiness of those roles.
Interestingly, Great Expectations is much about the powerful and the powerless too. Pip's struggle is really about understanding the uses and abuses of emotional power. Think of Pip and Estelle! Also, GE has a wonderful bit about sick room care when Joe Gargery takes care of Pip.
How is the Patient doing? I don't think I'd survive without reading...do the labels on his medications count? Maybe you could put some flash fiction on pill bottles and get around the prohibition that way?
EX OH
does reading a piece out loud to another person or persons somehow remind us that said piece was written by a person?
my students are reading much more out loud this school year. things we'd have done as a whole class (i.e. Romeo and Juliet) are being read at tables, so more kids are getting a chance to read. i get such pleasure walking around the room and listening to the voices, something that really surprises me.
I got in trouble with I was in elementary school for reading Jane Eyre instead of running around and playing. I had to hide it in the waistband of my skirt-with-shorts-underneath (no pants allowed on little girls -- that changed in fifth grade), and smuggle it way out behind the backstop of the baseball diamond, where I could read in peace. How I loved it. It strikes me as a perfect choice to read aloud in these circumstances. (Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, was so intense that I could barely handle it. I just give it another go.)
Thanks for the GREAT EXPECTATIONS suggestion--that opening is still one of my favorites, of any book.
I do think that the next book read will be quite short--say, DeLillo's THE BODY ARTIST. But we might still be reading JANE EYRE into next year.
"...does reading a piece out loud to another person or persons somehow remind us that said piece was written by a person?"
That's so beautifully said, Nancy. Thank you.
Susan--lovely to think of The Book taking care of you, out and away from the baseball field. And smuggling it: Jane herself would approve!
I love the idea of flash fiction for prescription bottles. I also love all that is not discussed in this post-—thus speaking volumes.
Must read Jane Eyre. And so much more.
I have to admit this sounds like a lovely way to convalesce (though convalescence is dire, in a way).
If there was ever a book for you, Elizabeth, it's Jane Eyre. I feel very certain of this.
From an interview I just found with Sarah Shun-lien Bynum:
Q: What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?
A: Jane Eyre. When I first read it in the eighth grade, I remember being struck by two things: the extreme attractiveness of Mr. Rochester, and my sudden, acute awareness of Charlotte Brontë as the book's author. Up to this point, I don't remember giving much thought to the writers of books I liked -- I was far more interested in the plots and the characters -- the authors themselves seemed, for the most part, like appendages. Maybe it's because the edition I read of Jane Eyre had that lovely pencil drawing of Charlotte Brontë on its cover, or because her name was displayed in the exact same font and size as the title. In fact, her name appeared above the title, which explains why my younger brother believed for years that "Charlotte Brontë" was the famous novel written by Jane Eyre.
I'd like to believe that my growing awareness of an authorial presence was due to my budding sophistication as a reader -- and certainly there was a new sort of intensity and urgency I felt in this book that might have suggested the workings of a very specific sensibility and imagination -- but I'm afraid I would be giving my eighth-grade self too much credit. Either way, I remember Jane Eyre as the moment I became curious about the person behind the book, a curiosity which eventually led, I think, to my first serious thoughts about what it meant to be a writer, to become a writer. Charlotte Brontë continues to exercise her hold over me, as does her sister Emily -- now, in addition to rereading Jane Eyre, I find myself returning to Anne Carson's The Glass Essay" and Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë , both of which cast their own spells.
The circumstances that led to it are terrible, but reading aloud to one's partner (lover? companion?-- oh, of course for you two we can use "husband,") is a beautiful thing to do, an immense pleasure as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps being read to is even better than doing the reading-aloud. And a very romantic thing, too.
Of course we're all in love with the intimate, interior unfolding of a novel read to oneself--the way the author's consciousness leaps upon ours and we surrender. But there's another kind of initmacy going on when that voice is relayed aloud through the voice of your loved one, isn't there? We wouldn't listen to Jane Eyre aloud read by just anyone, would we? It must be done by someone we trust very deeply. Someone who's grasp of our own inner life-- our soft-spots for certain types of imagery or narrative tropes, our senese of irony and pathos-- is full up from years of daily intimacy.
You must be looking forward to the day when Mark can return the favor and read the end of Jayne Eyre aloud to you, no?
Hello Christopher, I'm just coming on your comment now, several years after you posted it. It's so beautifully put and memorable. Thank you for that.
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