The Eyre Affair

[Robert]

I recently finished this futuristic novel about Jane Eyre by Jasper Fforde and found it to be a lot of fun. It concerns an age when literary detectives are able to travel into the text of a book (in this case, Jane Eyre) and change what happens. The protagonist, a woman named Thursday Next, unintentionally changes the ending of Jane Eyre, but many readers like the new ending better than the old.

[[deleted user]]

Interesting...I'll have to check that out.

[Emily]

It's very good! Depending on your perspective of good of course, but quite fun. Keep an open mind ;)You'll never read a book quite the same again...

[Beverley]

These books are great fun and so original. I especially loved all the twisted, sly literary fun with names. Well worth it.

[Moushumi]

Reread 'Jane Eyre' for the fourth time, prior to watching the new film adaptation. Confirmed my opinion that she was an original feminist. Her sense of entitlement as a person first, casting aside her status as an orphan, unlovely, poor individual, is classically told. Can't blame Rochester for falling hard for her!

[Lily]

But, as a 21st century female, it is hard for me to accept that a woman would be so romantic about a man who was so dishonest about his past. (Yes, I know she did wait until he had "suffered." Maybe Rhys (the book, not the movie) impacted my reading of Jane too much -- I did not read either as a romantic young person in my twenties or younger, but rather, for the first time, in my late forties, when I had a lot more sympathy for my other female wayfarers.)

[Ecatarina]

This looks very interesting. I hope that I fall into the camp of loving the new ending! I am going to add it to my list!

[Ajmira]

Did anyone think about the sexuality in Jane Eyre? I am doing my dissertation on it so I am going to add a chapter on the sexuality in governesses and contrast it with Agnes Grey.

[Lily]

samaira wrote: "Did anyone think about the sexuality in Jane Eyre? I am doing my dissertation on it so I am going to add a chapter on the sexuality in governesses and contrast it with Agnes Grey."

How is Jean Rhys's book playing into your thinking on the subject? I think her greatest input to me was thinking about the impact of sexuality on how women treat other women in the midst of their own (allowed and repressed) sexual desires and aims. (I think that the new movie has some nice touches on this subject if one watches it with that perspective in the back of one's mind.)

[Lily]

P.S. What about the experiences of the two sisters led them to such fairly different representations? (Did Charlotte's entanglement with her teacher permit her to envision the Jane who could attract Rochester?)

[Ajmira]

Lily wrote: "samaira wrote: "Did anyone think about the sexuality in Jane Eyre? I am doing my dissertation on it so I am going to add a chapter on the sexuality in governesses and contrast it with Agnes Grey."
..."

Hi Lily thanks for replying. Are you talking about Wide Sargasso Sea? I have never read that book.

[Lily]

samaira wrote: "...Are you talking about Wide Sargasso Sea? I have never read that book."

If I understand your posts accurately, your dissertation is concentrating on the representation of sexual behaviors of Victorian age governesses as exemplified in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and in her sister Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey.

Even though Wide Sargasso Sea is more about the woman in the attic than governesses, I would hesitate to do an oral defense of a thesis dealing with sexuality in Jane Eyre without having included WSS among my background work, largely because it deals so strongly with the potentially corrosive role men may (or may not -- depending on the stance taken towards Rhys's hypotheses) play on women's abilities to express their own sexuality.

[Lily]

samaira wrote: "...I don't know should I explore the representation of sexual behaviors. "

Is that a question? Obviously, it is your dissertation and your choices on what to include. All I intended by the phrase "representation of sexual behaviors" was the discussion of how "sexual ambiguity" relative to governesses is treated in the novels. I don't know whether you intend to approach the subject from the perspective of the governesses, or from the perspective of the mothers to whom they "report", or of the children they are charged to instruct, or of the masters of these households, or of the other servants, or of society at large, or...

I do know that if I sat on your oral defense panel, I'd find some question that would test your familiarity with WSS and its relevance to your work, if only to hear how cogently you would defend your response. (I am making the assumption this is a dissertation for university level work.)

[[deleted user]]

Jayne Eyre is wonderful...