← The Literary Life Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript314 lines
- [00:19]
A
This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong reader Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the science, skill and art of reading. Well, explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The Literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldecott, to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is the Literary Life Podcast. Hello and welcome back to the Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me is the gypsy of the House of Humane Letters.
- [01:36]
B
I knew you were going to do that.
- [01:38]
A
What would you rather me say? The Blanche Ingram?
- [01:43]
B
I can't really win with any of the supporting characters.
- [01:45]
A
Any form of Rochester.
- [01:47]
B
I don't really think I want to.
- [01:48]
A
You're not. You could not be less Rochester.
- [01:50]
B
I'm very un Rochesterian.
- [01:53]
A
Thank goodness I'm not Jane Eyre. So this works. We are continuing our discussion of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and today we're going to cover chapters 13 through 19. Okay, I remembered 13. 13 through 19. This has been a very, very fulfilling series for me because you guys are just killing it. Killing it. I mentioned last time that I don't think we've had such a large group of people in the Patreon following along in real time with the podcast before. So this is very exciting and you gu are just killing it. And I know we did. Actually, we did a whole podcast episode on this. What to do in the literary life feels overwhelming. And I know you can get into this stuff and just start stressing out and thinking, oh, no, I didn't get the education I needed. Why can't I read like this? Why isn't it making sense? Why aren't things clicking? And you can start to feel overwhelmed and discouraged and, and so one of the things that's so encouraging to me personally right now, seeing you guys on the Discord server for our Patreon, going through the book, is that you've hung in there. You've hung in there. You realize this is a slow process to. To gain these new eyes to see, to redeem your literary education. And you've hung in there with the podcast and it's clicking now and some of you have been hanging around for years and it's finally clicking. So this is to encourage anybody who's new. You will get there. And I'm just so proud of you guys. I, I poke on over to the, to the threads, and I see you guys noticing all the fairy tale elements and noticing the images and being able to put together very, very closely to what I'm going. So well done. Well done to all of you. You guys should be very proud of yourselves. And it encourages me to see how excited you guys are that you're seeing it. You're. You're getting it more. This is, this is a banner day. So I'm really glad that we have done this series for. For many reasons. All right, so as we said in the previous two episodes, House of Humane Letters is our day job. It is what allows this podcast to be for free. And so I won't just mention the same things I've been saying every week. Of course, we've got Jason Baxter's class and we've got Addison Hornsch webinar coming up, which we mentioned last time. So don't forget to sign up for that. And I hope you guys are joining the newsletter so you can keep up with what's going on. But I did want to give just a little tiny tease for something I just approved today. Well, I mean, the idea has been approved for a long time, but I just got the description in my hands today and approved it. And so it will be announced in probably like two weeks. But I'm going to give you a little tease anyway so you can be sure to sign up for the newsletter and pay attention to when this goes live. We are going to have a webinar in April, at the end of April on. You don't Even know this, Mr. Banks. You don't even know this yet.
- [04:38]
B
I'm out of the loop and I'm
- [04:39]
A
not going to read the description. I'm gonna. I'm save a little tease for next week. But I'll tell you what the topic is. Our. Our Inklings expert Jen Rogers is going to be doing a webinar on. Actually, I'm going to let you guess. She's going to do a webinar on what I think is CS Lewis's most underrated work. And if not the most.
- [05:00]
B
Oh, no, I do know about this. It's the Pilgrim's Regret.
- [05:03]
A
Yes, that's right. The crowd goes wild.
- [05:09]
B
I've read most of Lewis's books. That is one I read.
- [05:12]
A
I have not read.
- [05:13]
B
I know that he himself belittled it, I mean, kind of humbly. I know that he had kind of dismissed it as his first work of fiction. I was learning the craft still, et cetera. It was really good. I liked it a lot.
- [05:24]
A
I'm gonna make a point to read it. I'll read it.
- [05:26]
B
I think you'll. Yeah. Because I really expected it to be maybe more Bunyanesque than it turned out to be. But, yeah, I think it's a book that you would enjoy.
- [05:37]
A
I think it's his literary journey and sort of his struggle, actually. This fits a lot of Jane Eyre stuff, but his kind of struggle between the rational mind and the imagination and how to harmonize these different things.
- [05:47]
B
That tension is there. Yeah.
- [05:50]
A
Yeah. I'm really excited about this. So next week I'll read the official description and give you the title. I just wanted to give you guys a little tease about what we've got coming up, and we've got something exciting coming up in May, too. So sign up for the newsletter. Keep, Keep, keep on, on track about what we've got going on. All right, well, now it's the time for commonplace quotes. Mr. Banks, Mr. Rochester. Gypsy. Gypsy Banks. Yeah.
- [06:14]
B
Please never do that again. But, yes, my, My, commonplace is from a history of the Romantic Age by a historian named R.B. moat, who I think is basically forgotten today. But in his. In his time, he was very prolific historian. He was writing in the early to mid 20th century, and he wrote a biography of Henry V. He wrote an important book about the War of the Roses, and also a cultural history of the early 1800s in Europe called the Romantic Age. And he writes Romanticism is described more easily by examples than by definition. And that's not, like a really exciting observation. But I think it's. I think it's uncontestably true.
- [06:54]
A
I think that is true about so many things.
- [06:56]
B
Yeah. Because, I mean, it's, you know, this. As a teacher, it's sometimes hard to. To define, well, even to define something like the Middle Ages in its, you know, temporal parameter.
- [07:08]
A
No one in the Middle Ages thought,
- [07:09]
B
yeah, when does it begin and when does it end? And when does modernity really begin? And Romanticism, I think, is also like that. I mean, if you're describing it. If you're describing it as a cultural movement in the arts, which is, of course, one very important side of Romanticism. You have to give an account of this, well, movement or whatever you want to call it, this. This sort of ferment in the late 1700s, early 1800s, which includes Wordsworth and Coleridge, but also includes, you know, Wilhelm Meester or Goethe's Some of Goethe's writings also includes, you know, the opera as it develops at that time, and a thousand other things as well. And. Yeah, I think so. I. I find that very often when defining something as large and capacious as that term, defining it simply by instances and examples of it is easier than, well, just saying, here's a lexical definition and go with that.
- [08:14]
A
Absolutely. And, you know, we end up having to reduce very complicated things. And so how that plays out with people's understanding of Jane Eyre is that, you know, you'll hear a teacher say something like, this book is about reason versus emotion. It is so not about that. It is so much. It's so much more than that. That's a. That's a very flat understanding of Romanticism. But. But I feel like I'm stepping that the sound is that. That sound is the Angelina stepping up on her soapbox and the crowd goes wild. But, you know, the Romantic movement is very varied. How you like that? I'm a poet right here. And you will find that teachers, textbooks, things like that. Not genuine scholars. Okay. But the typical interaction you'll get with people on the Romantics is just a very reduced version. And Northrop Fry talks about the fact that there's really two strains of Romanticism. Yes, there's revolutionary romanticism, which is what most people think they mean when they talk about Romanticism. But then there's also conservative Romanticism. And in that category he puts Edmund Burke, Coleridge, Wordsworth. Right. So that's. If you listen to our episode on the literary tradition, that's the line we're following. The Plato, Aristotle, you know, the medievals, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Ruskin, Charlotte Mason, the Inklings, Northrop Frank. That's the line we're following. And Lewis and Tolkien even call themselves Romantics. Owen Barfil said that the Inklings considered themselves the last of the Romantics. And you know, that's. That's going to be very strange if you think Romanticism is Rousseau. It's just. It's a bigger field than that.
- [09:55]
B
You know, I would love it if someone actually wrote that book and the title is already taken. It's actually a very. It's kind of a missed opportunity because it was written. Well, not a missed opportunity. It really was written too early. But. Graham Hough Huff. I can never remember if it's Howe or Huff, but yes, Graham Hough. H o u G H. He wrote a book called the Last Romantics, which I think Yeats is the latest figure that he critically examines in that classic interpretive Work. But, yeah, like, we need a new Graham Huff to write. Sorry, this is gonna sound lame, but, like, the Last Romantics, two. Basically.
- [10:29]
A
The new last.
- [10:30]
B
Yeah, the laster. The laster. The even more last.
- [10:34]
A
The last Romantic colon.
- [10:36]
B
But no, I think that Romanticism. Yeah. It is important to recognize that is such a powerful force in its original appearance, you know, in the Napoleonic era and. And thereabouts, that the after effects of it are still very much with us. And that's. That's not uniquely true of Romanticism, but I think it is important to bear in mind.
- [10:57]
A
No, absolutely. It's a very important movement that we have yet to fully reckon with.
- [11:02]
B
Yeah, this may be. It's kind of like talking about it and exactly what its permanent legacy is. It kind of reminds me, you know, in the 80s, the then premier of China, Deng Xiaoping, some interviewer asked him, I think this is around the. With the second centennial of the French Revolution coming up. So this is towards the end of the 1980s. Someone asked him what he thought the historical importance of the French Revolution was, and he said, after pondering reflectively for a moment, well, it was only 200 years ago, so it's too early to tell.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah.
- [11:46]
B
Because I guess you're someone from a very old civilization like China, that that frame of mind might come more easily. Yeah. Merely 200 years ago.
- [11:56]
A
You know, I know. I know our audience is far bigger than just Americans or even, you know, North Americans, but. And I really appreciate that about our audience, but mostly our audience is Americans, and we really don't have a sense of history because our country is so new. And you and I have both traveled in Europe, and I think one of the moments where it hit me in a new way that. That everything in America is so new was when I was in Scotland, I was in Edinburgh, and I was in the new. The new part of Edinburgh.
- [12:34]
B
Okay.
- [12:34]
A
And they call it the new part.
- [12:36]
B
Yeah.
- [12:36]
A
And it was built in the 1700s.
- [12:38]
B
Oh, of course. Yes.
- [12:40]
A
And. And that. That really hit me because I thought, you know, I actually lived in the town that was the oldest town west of the Mississippi river, and I was somewhat proud of that. It was established in the 1700s, and I thought the new part of your town is significantly older than the oldest. The oldest town west of the Mississippi River. And I. And when they were giving me a tour of Edinburgh and pointing out all of the things, I. I joked and I said, you know, if you ever came to where I. I'm from, my God, the tour would be like, that's the new McDonald's on the side of the old McDonald's. It's, you know, like, just. We just don't have that.
- [13:16]
B
That Edinburgh is on my short list of cities I've never been to that I would love to see. Well, because, I mean, it's. There was the cap. It's the capital of Scotland and also a university town. And it's.
- [13:25]
A
It's very.
- [13:25]
B
It was.
- [13:26]
A
Yeah.
- [13:26]
B
I mean, it was. I can't remember somewhere I heard it called the Paris of Scotland.
- [13:31]
A
Okay. Wow. I did not expect this to be the episode, but so, true story. I've also been to Paris, and when I entered Edinburgh, all I could think was, this looks exactly like Paris. And so the guy who was my tour guide was actually the grandfather of my friend. He had lived there his entire life. And so we quite hit it off. When he found out I was French, we were. He said, oh, it's the old alliance. And we had a moment, a moment of bonding there. But I said to him, edinburgh looks just like Paris. And he was so excited, he said, well done. Edinburgh was designed by the same architect who designed Paris.
- [14:08]
B
So the Newtown Edinburgh design. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I mean, in the 1700s, everyone is trying to build on French lines. I mean, every. It was. Famously, every monarch in Europe had his own imitation Versailles. Yeah, yeah. Some of them aged perhaps better than others.
- [14:23]
A
You know, when I was in Edinburgh, I also got to stand on the heart of Midlothian. Oh, like the Sir Walter Scott novel.
- [14:30]
B
Jealous?
- [14:30]
A
Oh, yeah. I got to stand right there. Anyway, this is not what I thought we were gonna.
- [14:33]
B
No, I didn't think no either. But yeah, we're pro Scotland at the House of Human Letters.
- [14:38]
A
Oh, absolutely. But I've been joking for a while now that, you know, ever since Cindy went on her sabbatical, that the podcast is turning into, you know, our typical morning coffee talk. And this was. This would be it. This. We just. We just go where the thoughts take us. All right, well, I have a commonplace quote, and it's from GK Chesterton. It's an essay on Charlotte Bronte, which is just absolute fire. Gilbert Keith gets it. And I couldn't pick one small, little pithy quote, so you're gonna get two long paragraphs.
- [15:07]
B
Okay.
- [15:08]
A
All right. But this is.
- [15:09]
B
That's kind of your style, though.
- [15:10]
A
It is my style. You're like the one liner king. And I'm gonna tell a 20 minute story with voices and act it out, but fire away. Okay. For the Brontes, genius was above all things deputed to assert the supreme unimportance of externals. Up to that point, truth had always been conceived as existing, more or less. In the novel of manners, Charlotte Bronte electrified the world by showing that an infinitely older and more elemental truth could be conveyed by a novel in which no person, good or bad, had any manners at all. Her work represents the first great assertion that the humdrum life of modern civilization is a disguise as tawdry and deceptive as the costume of a bal mosque. She showed that abysses may exist inside a governess and eternities inside a manufacturer. Her heroine is the commonplace spinster with the dress of marino and the soul of flame. It's significant to notice that Charlotte Bronte, following consciously or unconsciously the great trend of her genius, was the first to take away from the heroine not only the artificial gold and diamonds of wealth and fashion, but even the natural golden diamonds of physical beauty and grace. Instinctively, she felt that the whole of the exterior must be made ugly, that the whole of the interior might be made sublime. She chose the ugliest of women in the ugliest of centuries and revealed within them all the hells and heavens of Dante. Okay, that's paragraph one. That's good, huh? That's so good. Oh, yes, that's so good. Okay, keep. Let's keep going, because I think what he says next is going to be helpful to understanding how we're supposed to interpret Rochester. Let's see. Okay. The whole aim and purport of meaning of the work of the Brontes Is that the most futile thing in the whole universe is fact. Such a story as Jane Eyre is in itself so monstrous a fable that it ought to be excluded from a book of fairy tales. The characters do not do what they ought to do, nor what they would do, nor, it might be said, such as the insanity of the atmosphere, not even what they intend to do. The conduct of Rochester is so primevally and superhumanly caddish that Bret Hart, in his admirable travesty, scarcely exaggerated it. Then, resuming his usual manner, he threw his boots at my head and withdrew, does perhaps reach to something resembling caricature. The scene in which Rochester dresses up as an old gypsy has something in it which is really not to be found in any other branch of art, except in the end of the pantomime where the emperor turns into a pantaloon. Yet despite the vast nightmare of illusion and morbidity and ignorance of the world, Jane Eyre is perhaps the truest book that was ever written. Its essential truth to life sometimes makes One catch one's breath. For it is not true to manners which are constantly false, or to facts which are almost always false. It is true to the only existing thing which is true emotion, the irreducible minimum, the indestructible germ. It would not matter a single straw if a Bronte's story were a hundred times more moonstruck and improbable than Jane Eyre, or a hundred times more moonstruck and improbable than Wuthering Heights. It would not matter if George Read stood on his head and Mrs. Reed rode on a dragon. If Fairfax Rochester had four eyes and St John Rivers had three legs, the story would still remain the truest story in the world. The typical Bronte character is indeed a kind of monster. Everything in him, except the essential is dislocated. His hands are on his legs and his feet on his arms. His nose is above his eyes, but his heart is in the right place.
- [18:59]
B
Well, I know.
- [19:00]
A
That is so good.
- [19:01]
B
I read that one myself not too long ago, and I really like that. Yeah, the line about abysses existing in governesses and volcanoes inside of manufacturers or whatever it was that was. I put that in my commonplace book. And that, by the way, is taken from his essay collection. I think it's 12 types or varied types. I think it's published under both titles. And if you've never read any of Chesterton's nonfiction, that's a pretty good one to dip into from time to time. It's not a book you need to read cover to cover, but it's just a dozen or so figures from literature, history, politics, both contemporary with Chesterton and from the past and his stray thoughts on them. So there's. There's an essay on Emperor Wilhelm ii, another on William Morris, Walter Scott, Charlotte Bronte and Savonarola, whom he admired. Chesterton admired the. The Fanatical Monks of Honorola and the Bonfire of the Vanities. Go figure.
- [20:04]
A
You know, Chesterton is the great. One of the great defenders of fairy tales and the fairy tale imagination. And so what I appreciate most about this is his reminder that just because something is not ordinary does not mean it's not real. And that's why he brings up the point about it doesn't matter if Rochester's a monster, if Mrs. Reed is on a dragon, if. If John Reed stands on his head like it kind of goes back to something CS Lewis says where he says, by realism, we. Realism is not necessarily more real than romance. Northrop Fry says the same thing. It's realism is ordinary. It's the ordinary things. Right. And what. What somebody like a Charlotte Bronte can do is help us to remember that even in the ordinary world, there's romantic tendencies. We're still on a quest. We're still out there trying to slay dragons. We're still on this journey.
- [21:03]
B
There are more and stranger impulses and springs of feeling than in almost everyone, from the most. You know, the most boring accountant or teacher. I'll throw myself in there. That you meet, than any of us can usually predict. And I think this book is actually kind of a healthy reminder of that.
- [21:21]
A
You know, somebody. Somebody said they were getting, like, almost Flannery o' Connor vibes. I think that's a great comparison.
- [21:26]
B
There are some grotesque.
- [21:27]
A
Where, you know, what Flannery o' Connor is trying to do is get our attention by exaggerating everything. You know, there's something to follow of Charlotte Bronte, too. And I think that's what Chesterton is saying when he says all of the characters are kind of monsters.
- [21:41]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [21:43]
A
Which is the same thing C.S. lewis said about her Charlotte Bronte. Everybody's a monster.
- [21:47]
B
Everyone seems like they're about to sprout horns and wings and things like that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I guess I wouldn't. I wouldn't have picked that up. I guess I wouldn't have noticed that just because Flannery o', Connor, amongst other things, is so wryly satirical and funny. But, no, I think the way that she creates characters has something. Has something. Well, yeah, something very gothic and, as we said, grotesque about it.
- [22:10]
A
Well, we've got some very important and symbolic chapters today, and I've kind of made a list of what scenes we should highlight as we go. Of course, we get to the end of volume one in chapter 15. If you don't have a book that's broken up into volumes, we'll tell you how the volumes break up. Because Victorian novels were broken into three volumes for many reasons, most of which that had to do with money.
- [22:32]
B
Yeah. The first volume of this is chapters one through 15.
- [22:36]
A
Yes. And volume two is chapter 16 through 27. And volume three is chapter 28 to 38. So we'll. We'll let you know. But we've ended up volume one with chapter 15. That's. That's the fire chapter. So it ends with the fire. And we, of course, will take a look at that. And well done to everybody who realized that the fire scene is a repeat of the Red Room scene all the way down to the fire going up the curtains like the red curtains in the bedroom. So good job. I was trying to lay some, you know, drop some little nuggets there, there little breadcrumbs for you to follow in that first episode. And good job. You guys did a good job. Alrighty, let's take a look at chapter 13. Let's start there. All of my insane post it notes and flags sticking out of this book. And we will talk about Rochester because of course she's met him now and now she's going to start having a conversation with him. And the character of Rochester is going to be very challenging for you. If you insist on reading this as a novel of manners, if you insist on reading this as, you know, surface level, these are regular people. And what would this mean if I met a guy in real life? Life. But frankly, if you're reading it like that, you're ignoring the 472,000 fairy tale references in here. Like, she's hitting, she's like John Reed hitting us over the head with a book. Okay. She keeps telling us how to read this symbolically and read it like a fairy tale.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah. And one of the first things we notice about him, I mean, almost from the moment he steps onto the page, is that his interest in Jane is kind of hard to define. It's difficult to put a tag on. I mean, obviously he does take an interest in her, but is it a romantic interest? Is it merely a, you know,
- [24:25]
A
a
- [24:26]
B
meeting of two kind of similar souls of odd people who don't really fit in in the world? Is he playing some kind of, you know, malevolent cat and mouse game with her? I remember the first time I read that, I wasn't exactly sure. I mean, his actions towards her are kind of made to discomfort, I think, not just her, but the reader.
- [24:49]
A
And I don't want to get too far ahead of myself because I want to circle back to this idea toward later in this episode and then on subsequent episodes. But I will say that this ambiguity is intentional and we are supposed to feel disoriented. Jane is supposed to feel disoriented. And we are supposed to not know if Rochester is okay or not. And this is all part of Jane's journey. Right. And so we know in the previous section she made a reference to Bluebeard. And so I want to talk about that for just, just a minute. Now, I won't interpret that fairy tale for you. So it won't, you know, I just, I, I just leave it at that. I won't interpret it. But I'll give you some Basic facts about it that people would have known. So Bluebeard is a French fairy tale. Actually, both the fairy tales about to reference are fren. I think is highlighted in the fact that there's so much French in this book and Adele is French and Jane speaks French and has a French education. The Brontes themselves read a great deal of French fairy tales. The Grimm's version of Bluebeard is Fitcher's bird. So it's not like, you know, made up in France. But the Bluebeard is the French version of it. And this is the story of a guy. Well, actually it has a lot in common with even Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights.
- [26:11]
B
Oh, yes.
- [26:11]
A
Right.
- [26:12]
B
So the much married man.
- [26:14]
A
Right, the much married man whose wives are all killed and the, the last one to come on sort of solves the puzzle or, or you know, does the trick or ends the curse. Right, with Scheherazade. She. She tells tales and to keep herself alive and he ultimately, you know, keeps her alive. So that's not an uncommon fairy tale trope. The much married man, as you say. So for Bluebeard, a young girl is married to a guy and he's basically like, you can go everywhere you want in the house. Just don't go in that room at the top of the stairs.
- [26:43]
B
He's usually all older, considerably older than she is.
- [26:47]
A
Right. So there's, there's an off limits part of the house. Of course. One day she's going to go in there and she sees there the bodies of all his former wives. He's killed them all. And she realizes she's next and she keeps her wits about her and she ends up being the girl who escapes this curse and her brothers come and kill him. So the reason. So, so okay, that's. That's one fairy tale. We'll just, we'll just leave that. The other obvious fairy tale going through all these Rochester scenes is Beauty and the Beast.
- [27:19]
B
Yeah. And those are kind of eerily similar fairy tales in set up.
- [27:23]
A
Yes, yeah, yes. Very, very similar. Okay, so young girl gets married, scary looking guy. And people really misunderstand Beauty and the Beast. I mean, I've heard like insane interpretations like she has Stockholm, Stockholm syndrome. That's why she stick. There's all kinds of nutty things like that by people who don't know how to read symbolically. But Beauty and the Beast is about learning to look past the exterior of somebody and to see the interior. Right. And we have a lot of emphasis in these scenes on Rochester's not Very attractive exterior. There's so many. Beauty and the Beast echoes the fact that he's kind of grumpy with her immediately when she's in the house. But over time, they start to have these conversations. She starts to get more comfortable with him. They kind of have an intimacy in their. In their talk. And there's even a scene in these chapters where she says, I no longer thought he was ugly. He's the most attractive person in the world to me. Right. So it's very. Very Beauty and the Beast. So what's going on here, then, is in this section and. And again, when. When you've got a. Buildings Roman, or even just a regular Journey of the Soul story, she's. She's going through life. She's growing up. She is an initiate in the world still. Right. She's got to learn these lessons. And so this whole section of the book at Thornfield is presenting her with this dilemma. Who is Rochester? Is he the Beast from Beauty and the Beast? And I, being beauty, can soothe him and bring out this inner beauty. And she had. There's lots of conversations which seem to suggest that. Or is he Bluebeard and I'm in danger. Right. And so even though we don't have a previous wife here, what we have is a story of a previous mistress that he has discarded.
- [29:14]
B
Yeah.
- [29:14]
A
And so there's a.
- [29:15]
B
So many things about him suggest danger in a lot of ways. I mean, and even when he's being. He is friendly with her in his way, which needs to be underlined, I guess, and highlighted. Because even when he's. He's the kind of man. Even when he's being friendly with a woman, he's not a gentleman. Manners are not good.
- [29:34]
A
Well, that's what Chester did say. It's not a novel of manners. It's a novel with no one having any man.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah. Like he and she. I. It's interesting, though, like, one point of contact of souls, or whatever you want to call it, between them. They're both unguardedly sincere people. I think I had forgotten that. But I think that is a. That I think goes far to explain the attraction between them and make it credible as a fictional attraction. And so, I mean, he'll say things like, very bluntly to her, you have lived the life of a nun. No doubt you are well drilled in religious forms. Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is a parson, is he not? So on and so forth. And like, he kind of throws her identity in her face without insulting her directly.
- [30:24]
A
But there's also a little bit of playfulness and enjoyment.
- [30:27]
B
I think so, Yeah, I think there is.
- [30:28]
A
So, for example, you know, in this scene where he says, do you think I'm handsome? And she says, no. And he says, wow, you just put it right out there. And then she's like, oh, I'm sorry. I should have. You know, I should have said something more generic. And he's like, no, I'm glad you didn't. And so that's contrasted with Blanche Ingram in these same sections, who's just, you know, going on and on with the flattery. And what you see there is the. The contrast in the women that Jane has no skill in the arts of charming a man, whereas she's all.
- [30:57]
B
Takes all the boxes for feminine accomplishments. She can. She can speak decent French, she can sing, she can play on the piano forte and who knows, like, just everything else.
- [31:07]
A
And she has just like, the perfect
- [31:09]
B
hair and, you know.
- [31:10]
A
No, she's perfect externally.
- [31:11]
B
Does that say. She has a noble bust.
- [31:14]
A
She's got. She's got a lot of charm. And so in these scenes, which of course, drive me crazy because I'm much more Jane Eyre than Blanche Ingram. But. But she has this way of being very charming to all the men. And Jane is watching this and. But she's thinking to herself, this is all fake.
- [31:29]
B
Yeah.
- [31:29]
A
There's nothing real under this. Right. And so, again, this is not just true of Charlotte Bronte, this is true of fairy tales. Fairy tale worlds are harsh black and whites. There's not a lot of subtlety there. Right. And so you've got Jane. Super plain Jane. But Jane's real. Right. And she's going to tell the truth, and she's going to be direct. And then you've got beautiful Blanche, who is all superficial fluff. And when we can. We can talk in a minute.
- [31:51]
B
She's one of Cinderella's stepsisters.
- [31:53]
A
Yeah. And when we get there, we can talk about how, you know, this is definitely the Victorian ideal of a woman, and. And the things of that nature. I mean, there's many, many layers going on in this book. But I think that Rochester appreciates her directness. Like, this is a woman. If this woman will. Will not try to flatter me, I can actually have a conversation with her.
- [32:12]
B
Yeah. And you can't imagine her telling a lie.
- [32:14]
A
Right?
- [32:15]
B
Yeah.
- [32:16]
A
He's got a lot of Helen Burns in her in this section.
- [32:18]
B
Oh, yes, absolutely. Especially after the Blanche Ingram episode, when she rebukes herself.
- [32:25]
A
Yeah, I will.
- [32:26]
B
Kind of running ahead.
- [32:27]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [32:28]
B
It's interesting Though that. I mean, I don't think we had ever. Correct me if I'm wrong, but up to that point, had she ever consciously said, this is the man I'm going to marry and I'm going to do whatever I have to do to get him?
- [32:39]
A
No, absolutely.
- [32:39]
B
I mean, she's developing feelings for him, obviously, but like she's.
- [32:43]
A
But she's reproachful.
- [32:44]
B
She's not like a silly junior high school girl.
- [32:48]
A
Is he paying me special attention or am I an idiot here? Yeah, but again, she knows nothing. She doesn't.
- [32:53]
B
I mean she. Yeah, she doesn't know men at all. I'm certainly not a guy as strange as Rochester. So she. Yeah, she doesn't really know how to read his response.
- [33:00]
A
Exactly. And that's going to become a plot thing later on. The fact that she's so inexperienced in, in these ways. And I want to go back to what I said about Bluebeard and the danger that, that, that Rochester represents here because you know, obviously he tells her a pretty detailed story of his life with Celine Varins and that he then cast her off and he hints to some sort of tragic backstory here. But the Victorian reader is going to instantly recognize him as the Byronic hero of the gothic novel. And the Byronic hero is always going to have a sordid romantic past. There's going to be a lot of love. Them.
- [33:38]
B
Yeah, not just women. Bad like he died young, but like something scandalous about it.
- [33:43]
A
I'm trying to keep it family friendly here, but yeah, there's going to be
- [33:46]
B
a biography of Byron.
- [33:47]
A
Exactly. Paramour or two in the wings. And so that, that's the danger. And of course, you know, you see how this is being set up. But of course Charlotte Bronte is going to do genius things with them. She's not writing a sentimental novel, so just be patient there. But she's setting it up almost like a romance novel. Right. Young, innocent, you know, the angenue from central castingue comes in. Here's the. The dangerous bad boy. And we all know how that sentimental novel ends, right. He's won over by her innocence and charm and you know, we have gives
- [34:17]
B
him a catechism and her hand in marriage.
- [34:19]
A
Yeah, exactly. And then he ends up becoming the reformed rake. And we can talk more about that as we go. But the, the reformed rake trope was in a lot of sentimental novels, although serious literary works would subvert that and undermine that. And I think we'll see that in this novel as well. But the reformed rake, it's Still a very popular sentimental trope. It's in all the romance stuff now,
- [34:41]
B
like what that novel looks like in the mid 19th century in the Victorian era. Read an essay by George Eliot called Silly Novels, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. And I don't remember that she includes this novel by name, but I think it is believed she may have actually had Jane Eyre. She might kind of have lumped Jane Eyre in with some of the.
- [35:02]
A
Virginia Woolf did the same thing.
- [35:04]
B
You know, there's a certain type of. Yeah, it's interesting that many of this book's most famous critics have been women.
- [35:10]
A
And I think. I can't even remember. I think it was the Adrienne Rich article who took Virginia Woolf to task and said, you know, she has all these pull quotes from Virginia Woolf and saying, did you even read this novel? Because that is not what happens. But it is true that this is what Charlotte Bronte is setting it up. The reader in the, you know, 1800s is going to think. Think that's what this is. And then, of course, you know, what she's going to do with it is going to be even the more exciting. But the reformed rake trope, just briefly, is the idea that the bad boy can be a bad boy and then meet the right girl and settle down and make an excellent husband after, you know, a few obstacles that stand in the way of true love. And the best novelists subvert that and we'll see what she's going to do with that. But I think we can all say she has set things up in this scene as if this is where this is going. She's in love with this Byronic bad boy and. And, you know, maybe she can get him to fall in love with her, and then, you know, we all know how that's going to go. He's going to be a reformed rake. But nonetheless, the danger of the rake is still a danger. Right. Will I be the next in a long line of English and French mistresses? Or is this Beauty and the Beast? So essentially, we can be. We can be thinking in terms of Jane Air asking herself, which story am I in?
- [36:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. And though, I mean, it's not. This isn't a social novel, as we've perhaps belabored the point too much. But social questions do kind of present themselves to you naturally, as you're going through this, and you have to ask, I mean, if Rochester was just looking for another mistress and that mistress were Jane Eyre and he were to cast her off, what would happen to her? I mean, so beyond The Bluebeard, maybe he's a serial murderer who might kill me in his dungeon.
- [36:54]
A
I mean, okay, so since my, my master's is in the Fallen Woman in Victorian literature, I mean that this is my, this is my jam right here. And the danger that a Bluebeard type character presents to a ingenue in the
- [37:09]
B
18 in a modern context, it's not
- [37:11]
A
that he's going to murder her, but that he will destroy her in some other way. Right. I mean, think Tessa, the d', Urbervilles, you know, in any of those.
- [37:19]
B
It's kind of interesting also that like that Tess in this book, I mean, very different novels with very different characters and endings, but the situation at the beginning is in some ways kind of similar. You have an inexperienced woman who's still practically a child in both cases being thrust into a dangerous situation and with different, very different results. Being unable to interpret it adequately as first does.
- [37:47]
A
That's right. And so the Fallen Women novels really do deal with. A lot of times it's a servant girl. So she's in a very compromised situation. The it's not just men woman, but it's master servant.
- [37:59]
B
Esther Waters is a. She's a menial of some kind also, isn't she?
- [38:02]
A
Yeah, Ruth.
- [38:03]
B
Ruth.
- [38:04]
A
With Gaskell's Ruth, an award winning paper written by your wife back in the day. But the danger for these inexperienced girls when these, these older men in power make a romantic play for them is that they can be seduced into thinking this is a real relationship and you're gonna marry me when the guy's a rake and he has no intention of that. And so, you know, they will toy with a young lady for a while and then cast her aside. Off in the moment of casting aside is when she has lost her character. How's that for you?
- [38:40]
B
Yes. Lost her virtue. I love lost her virtue.
- [38:42]
A
Well, I meant lost her character in the sense. Sense. I mean, in this specific sense. So she ends up pregnant and then now she doesn't have a character which is what we would call a letter of reference. So she can't get a job anywhere as a servant girl because she has lost her character.
- [38:55]
B
But still as a baby.
- [38:56]
A
That's right.
- [38:57]
B
She becomes a charge on the parish
- [38:59]
A
or a prostitute or always that's what they ended up doing. And so you see quite a few novels dealing with that. Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters is another one that deals with this.
- [39:09]
B
So you know Mary Webb also, she wrote a number of rural novels. Mary Webb is almost kind of the female Counterpart to Thomas Hardy. Seriously underrated novelist who deserves attention. But that was a. That was a situation that she went into in some of her books.
- [39:27]
A
No question. The social aspects of the fallen women are being explored by many novelists, but Charlotte Bronte, that's just like, one layer on top of other things. The point is that Rochester presents another kind of threat to Jen. Or maybe. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Right. She doesn't know. Yeah, but he's the Byronic bad boy. Either that I can show him some real love and he'll come around, or he's gonna drag me down with him. And that's a real danger that the readers would have understood. But it's being presented to us in these fairy tale terms.
- [39:57]
B
We don't know all the cards that Charlotte Bronte is holding yet, but she's kind of given us a couple of hints.
- [40:02]
A
Right. At least on the side of the cards that are facing us. It's all fairy tale.
- [40:06]
B
Don't know what her whole card is.
- [40:07]
A
Exactly. And I remember when you and I were reading this together just a few weeks ago, when we read through the whole novel together first, you came to me and said, does Rochester ever call her a person? Or is it always elf, witch, sprite, otherworldly character?
- [40:21]
B
Yeah, from the beginning. Like, did you cast a spell on my horse? Yeah. And the fact that he himself is kind of an otherworldly character is maybe an example of, like, being drawn to, like.
- [40:32]
A
Right, exactly. And you pointed out to me, too, that he. He. He says he can't judge her age.
- [40:38]
B
Yeah, she.
- [40:38]
A
And that's part of her otherworldliness, too.
- [40:41]
B
Yeah. We know that she's plain in her own estimation. She doesn't turn heads. But. Yeah. And does she look older or younger than her age?
- [40:51]
A
I always.
- [40:51]
B
We know that she's short. We know that she's short. I don't think we have much in the way of detailed description of her appearance other than that she's diminutive and doesn't look her age.
- [41:02]
A
Right. And I'm gonna save my thoughts about her appearance till a little bit later.
- [41:05]
B
Okay.
- [41:06]
A
Okay. I was so careful having to keep the. The spoilers to myself. But something happens in chapter 13 that I want us to take a look at because he. Well, first of all, he tries to find out if she's accomplished. Right. So can you play the piano? And then. Oh, I'm satisfied. You play a little piano like every other girl in England. But then he looks at her drawings,
- [41:27]
B
and there are kind of otherworldly.
- [41:29]
A
There and he's very taken by them and says, these are good. And then, of course, gives her the first of many, many, many fairy tale trials. You have to understand this is a fairy tale, and she will be given trials. And the first is, prove to me you wrote these, you drew these.
- [41:43]
B
Okay.
- [41:43]
A
And that you didn't just copy it. And she does. I'll just say this, we'll come back to this, but I'm going to throw this out here, too. Beauty and the Beast is really the fairy tale version of the Cupid and Psyche story.
- [41:55]
B
Correct.
- [41:55]
A
And so there's going to be a lot of Cupid in Psyche here. And Cupid and Psyche is well understood to be a journey of the soul story. I mean, Psyche being the word for soul. And Cupid and Psyche. In that story, Psyche is presented with a number of impossible tasks on her journey toward, you know, immortality. So you're going to see those same kinds of echoes. I mean, Cinderella also has impossible tasks, and there's a lot of Cinderella echoes here. So we shouldn't get caught up in some kind of horizontal mindset of what kind of games is this guy playing with her? Like, I always tell my students, you meet this guy in real life, do not date any character like this. Right. But if in a story, this. This is not dating advice. So Cupid in Psyche is going to present her with a lot of impossible tasks, and that's what's going on here.
- [42:41]
B
And I have to say, so far, not just, you know, her particular social situation, but the universe itself in this book seems designed with the express purpose of presenting our heroine with impossible tas masks.
- [42:54]
A
Exactly.
- [42:54]
B
The very heavens.
- [42:55]
A
You know, so. So just try not to make the mistake of thinking if my daughter met a guy who treated her like this and definitely would tell her, run away. Obviously, yes. And you would be a good mother to do so. But, you know, I wouldn't want my daughter marrying Beauty and the Beast. Or, you know, I would. Any of the. Any of the.
- [43:11]
B
You know, honestly, if you were to put together a book of dating or courting advice out of the Bronte canon, I think you might end up with some disturbing.
- [43:20]
A
Right.
- [43:20]
B
Possible suggestions.
- [43:21]
A
Remember, it's not that kind of story.
- [43:23]
B
No.
- [43:23]
A
This is a journey of the soul. And the characters represent various obstacles. Our helps, I mean, Helen Burns, I think, was a. Was a help as well as she presented a possible temptation of becoming too cold, putting out her fire altogether. But speaking of fire, we'll get there. But let's take a look at the three paintings, because I found an Article which kind of gives an interpretation of them, which I thought something very interesting. So the first of all, when. When she's. When she's thinking about these paintings, she says, I saw them with a spiritual eye before I attempted to body embody them. So that's. That very symbolic. I'm sort of seeing the essence. So the first painting is a scene of a desolate shipwreck portraying a cormorant. Its beaks held a gold bracelet set with gems. Now, I caught right away when in a few chapters, she paints the. The picture of who she imagines Blanche Ingram to be. She puts the gold br. On Blanche as well.
- [44:20]
B
And a cormorant is a scavenger burden. Right.
- [44:22]
A
So. So this is. This is a symbolic picture of the threat that is coming. Hey, I might like my boss, but there's a threat now it don't get all caught up with. But she drew this before she met Rochas. Yes, I know. This is symbolism. Everything's symbolic in this story. So they're. So they're looking at this. So then we have the second painting, which is the evening star, the foreground only the dim peak of a hill, leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Rising into the sky was a woman shaped to the bus. The painting is immediately identified by Rochester, who asks Jane, where did you see Latmos? For this is Latmos. You want to tell us about the Latmos myth?
- [45:01]
B
Yes. So that's Endymion and Selene. Selene, the goddess of the moon who fell in love with the mortal shepherd Endymion. Yeah. And John Keats wrote a poem about Endymion, by the way. That was his first major poem. That's where a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I think that's. That's Endymion.
- [45:20]
A
Right, so again, marriage, love, an immortal falling in love with immortal. That kind of thing. And then the third, he says, is the most enigmatic of the three. It's a head, a colossal head. Above the temples, amidst wreath turban folds, gleamed a ring of white flame. This pale crescent was the likeness of a kingly crown, which it diademmed was, which if. If diademmed was the shape, which shape had none. And he says, for the message hidden within this strange painting, we must again look to the book of Job. I put on my righteousness as a garment, and it clothed me. Justice, like a cloak or a turban wrapped me round. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. Okay, so we can't say everything this will mean. But these are interesting signs. Right, so we have a threat coming into this happy time of her life in the form of this cormorant bird, Branch Ingram. Then we have the legend of an immortal falling in love with a mortal. And then we have Job. You think we might have some sufferings in this book on the way to the purification of the soul? I think yes. I think yes. All right, the next thing. Oh, chapter 14. Yes. Okay, so let's take a look at their conversation because this is. This is really good. First of all, she describes Rochester as being moody, but if you track it, he's different during the day than he is after dinner.
- [46:52]
B
Yeah, it's a very, very protean emotional disposition. Yes, he changes a lot.
- [46:58]
A
He changes a lot. But that's a very fairy tale trope, too. Somebody who's under some kind of enchantment. And they're one way during the day and they're another way during night. Sometimes you might be an animal, but
- [47:10]
B
lady hawk in Cupid and Psyche, you know, in the Tale of Cupid, Cupid and Psyche, when she can't see him, you know, he only visits her at night. Just true nature is disguised. He could be a God, but he could be some kind of beast or monster.
- [47:23]
A
That's good. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. Exactly right. So, again, don't try to read this, this realistically as what's wrong with this man. He's so moody. Like, this is Cupid and Psyche. All right, but let's take a look at that conversation when he's giving her a little kind of backstory about him. About how once he was innocent and good like her, but now he's not anymore. When I was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough. Partial to the unfledged, unfostered and unlucky. But fortune has knocked me about since she has even kneaded me with her knuckles. And now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India rubber ball. Pervious, though, through a chink or two, still and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes. Does that leave hope for me? Hope of what, sir? Of my final retransformation from India ball rubber back to flesh. Decidedly. He has had too much wine, I thought. How could I tell whether he was capable of being retransformed? Okay, there you go. That's the heart of it, right?
- [48:23]
B
Tell me if you agree with me. I mean. So, yes, we see that Mr. Rochester might need some kind of transformation. Some kind of.
- [48:31]
A
Which It's Beauty and the Bee.
- [48:33]
B
Okay. It's not entirely certain that he's being sincere in that conversation.
- [48:37]
A
You think?
- [48:38]
B
I mean, I think he's. I mean, yes, he's being honest. That fortune has knocked him down, but doesn't it seem like he's being kind of playful and facetious?
- [48:47]
A
I guess I read him.
- [48:48]
B
I could be wrong about that. But.
- [48:50]
A
Okay, so I read him as being sincere in his playfulness.
- [48:54]
B
All right. Actually, that's a fine way of putting. Yeah. The sort of person who is being entirely honest but also has a kind of sarcastic tone that's directed at themselves.
- [49:08]
A
Yes.
- [49:09]
B
Yeah. Does that make sense?
- [49:11]
A
I think it does. That's how I read him.
- [49:14]
B
He's actually, I had not remembered that. He's kind of a self effacing character in some respects, which you don't really expect a Byronic hero to be. You kind of expect the Byronic hero to exist in this kind of isolated Olympian pride, but.
- [49:29]
A
And then he tells her a little bit more about his past. Do you want to. You want to pick it up here?
- [49:35]
B
Yes. I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a color of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbors to myself. I started, or rather, for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on the ill fortune and adverse circumstances, was thrust onto a wrong tack at the age of 1 and 20 and have never recovered the right course since. But I might have been very different. I might have been as good as you, wiser, almost as stainless. I envy your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory, little girl. A memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure, an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment, is it not? And then skipping a bit, nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Ms. Eyre, one of the better kind. And you see I am not so. And continuing. Then take my word for it, I am not a villain. You are not to suppose that. Not to attribute to me any such bad eminence. But owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent. I am a trite, commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations that I avow this to you. No, no, sorry.
- [50:58]
A
In all the poor petty dissipations with
- [51:00]
B
which the rich and worthless try to put on life. I skipped a line there.
- [51:03]
A
So that's an interesting conf. I'm a bad man, but I'm not A villain. I'm just a commonplace sinner. And I love that because I think that that emphasizes this is in every man Journey of the Soul story. He's not a villain. He's a commonplace sinner. And of course, he's going to confess to her in the next chapter the nature of his sin.
- [51:21]
B
That actually is a Byronic trope also. I mean, the fact that, yes, he's done some pretty bad things, things that any person with a conscience would be ashamed of, but there also might be some kind of attendant factors which make us feel sorry. Sorry for him as well.
- [51:35]
A
Yes.
- [51:36]
B
You know, just bad luck. Just met the wrong woman at the wrong time and was, you know. Yeah. As much sinned against as sinning, maybe.
- [51:43]
A
There you go. And then just a little bit further down in that same section, they have a conversation about remorse or repentance. And I thought this was really good. Dread remorse when you are tempted to air, miss. Air. Remorse is the poison of life. Well, first of all, he's punning on air and air, so, you know, just. Just put that in your hat and keep it for a little while. Dread remorse when you are tempted to air, miss. Air. Remorse is the poison of life. Repentance is said to be its cure, sir. Okay, this is where I feel like she was really channeling her inner Helen Burns. It's not its cure. Reformation may be its cure. And I could reform. I have strength yet for that, if. What is the use of thinking of it? Hampered, burdened, cursed as I am. Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life. And I will get it, cost what it may. Then you will degenerate still more, sir. Possibly. Yet why should I? If I can get sweet, fresh pleasure, and I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the more. Okay, so that's really interesting. Right. What is the poison of life is remorse. It's regret. And she says, no repentance will cure you. He said, no, no, not repentance. Reformation. So we'll see what comes of that. And then she. He says, what do you think of my character? And she basically reads him really, really well. Right. I'm not as. You're not as good as you think you should be. And I think you could be a better man. You just need to. You need to do it. And then he says, I'm on my way to hell. And she said, what do you mean? He says, because hell is paid by good intentions. The way to hell is paid by good intentions. And then I want to notice just a couple more things here. One, she stops him and says, I have no wish to talk nonsense. And he said, if you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense. So there's a little bit of upside downness going in this section, too. And then he says, I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close set bars of a cage. A vivid, restless, resolute Captive is there word but free it would soar cloud high. So Jane as a caged bird who wants to soar. And then chapter 15. All right, so this is when he talks about Celine Varens. And quite significantly, immediately after confessing to Jane that he had a mistress, his bed's on fire. Come on, symbol alert, guys. Symbol alert. And we can look at this. Let's first kind of get the facts of Celine Varins. What do you want to say about that?
- [54:12]
B
You take the lead here.
- [54:14]
A
Okay, so it's a. Right before we get to that, we still have a ton of Beauty and the Beast stuff, so.
- [54:20]
B
Oh, actually, one thing I should say, I mean, the fact that she's French is meant, I think, to suggest that there's something disreputable here to begin with, because in the Victorian period, I mean, this is a great age of English provincialism. And Whereas in the 18th century, you know, having family or contacts in France would be a sign of, you know, perhaps good breeding during the 19th century, you know, this is the post Napoleonic, post French revolutionary world. Anything French carries with it a suggestion of possible immorality. And I was reading actually a social history of the Victorian era. And one place where evangelical societies were fond of handing out, you know, very alarmist sort of religious tracts was at Dover. So whenever, if you were a young man getting on the packet boat from Dover to Calais, you know, some lady from the Evangelical Women's Society would come up to you with a. With a, you know, little pamphlet or. Or tract detailing all the sort of horrible things that were going to happen to you if you got involved with a French woman. If you go to France, if you even set foot in France, you will get syphilis and you will die, that kind of thing.
- [55:39]
A
It's true, though.
- [55:39]
B
It's not an exaggeration. I mean. Yeah, it was so. So the fact that Rochester has had a romantic liaison not with just with a woman, but with a French woman is that also has all kinds of suggestions of dissipation, absolutely irredeemable wickedness.
- [55:55]
A
We Talked about the fact that Charlotte Bronte dedicated this to Thackeray, but it really struck me anew that Adele is the. The orphan of a French opera singer. And that is Becky Sharp.
- [56:08]
B
I know. Yeah, yeah. Adele, your future is being a social climber, right?
- [56:15]
A
So the big things we want to hit from him. Telling the story of Celine Veron, who. I know I said Varens last time, but Veron. And is that he gets played, right? He. He gets played by her because she convinces him she can see past his ugly exterior to the good man he is underneath and that she actually loves him. And he. He quickly finds out that she's just using him for his money. Which, of course, in the next chapter is going to be the threat by Blanche Ingram. Right. Because Jane says, I don't think she actually loves him. I think she's just attracted to his. His wealth. And it's very interesting that despite all of this and wanting nothing to do with Seline, he does take the little girl, even though the little girl is most likely not his child. Child,
- [57:04]
B
yeah. There are some doubts about that.
- [57:06]
A
And Jane looks at her and says, she doesn't look anything like him. And so he. He doesn't. He. He thinks he's just been played by her. But still there is something in him that can't leave this girl.
- [57:15]
B
I mean, on the one hand that, yes, he's corruptible, but also that he potentially has a sense of honor where his duties are concerned.
- [57:22]
A
Right, right, right. And so after this kind of intimate confession, because he says it's. Talking to her is like writing in his own diary. So, you know, there's a little doubling going on there, but there's a lot of Beauty and the Beast stuff that happens. So after this intimacy, the way she looks at him changes. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform toward me than at first. It never seemed in his way. And he did not take fits of chilling hauteur. When we met unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome. He always had a word and sometimes a smile. And she goes on to say, day my bodily health improved. I gathered flesh and strength, and was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No reader. Gratitude and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best like to see. His presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. And so, you know, that's very Beauty and the Beast. He's not ugly to me anymore. I see the man he is. And then she says, I thought there were excellent materials in him, though for the present, they hung together. Somewhat spoil, coiled and tangled. So she wants to get to the mystery of what has. What is this curse that hangs over him again, Fairy, Beauty and the Beast. So she goes to sleep that night. And this is. This is so important. Immediately after saying, I have a mistress. Okay, so let's go back to the Bluebeard thing. What's the danger? The danger is that she's going to be seduced by her employer and be cast aside. Which of course means, once again, the danger is she will be burned up in her passion. And here we are. Okay, the man's bed is on fire. Charlotte Bronte could not be hitting us over the head with a bigger symbol than. This is what he represents to her. This is the danger. Okay, and so let's take a look at some of the stuff that's happening. She wakes up hearing a demonic laugh, and she thinks it's in the room with her. It actually thinks it's. She thinks it's coming from her pillow. Guys, double alert, Double alert. Okay? And. And then she opens the door and sees that his bed is on fire and he's dying. Okay, do I need to connect the dots for you guys? This, this, this little thing right here, this is the threat that he will be burned up, that she will be burned up in this passion that is developing if he turns out to be Bluebeard and not the beast. So his room is literally red. It's on fire. The bed's on fire. The flames are. Are climbing up the sheets and the curtains alongside. It's the exact same description as the red room. Go back and read it.
- [59:49]
B
What do we do when the beds are burning? Sorry. I'm going to bring one 80s song into every episode of this. Of this book. Last week it was Every Rose has its Thornfield. I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep. I have to. I mean, you know this book so much better than I do. I can only contribute cheesy jokes.
- [60:06]
A
We'll have a bingo card. Mr. Banks's karaoke card. Yes, download now. Now, it's very interesting, though. So she throws water on it. Okay, so let's just hang on to that. Right? His bed is on fire. And she's the one that puts out the fire. She saves him. She also saves the whole house from burning down, presumably. Right. So very interesting. Fire and water. Just like we had Jane as fire and Helen burns as ice. Now we have a fire and water thing. Just hold that lightly because this girl's gonna be on a journey. And it's really interesting. That when he wakes up, he says, in the name of all the elves in Christendom, Is that Jane Eyre? And what have you done with me? Witch Sorceress. Right. Okay. So symbolically, what have you done to me? Right. As if she set his bed on fire. Symbol alert, guys.
- [60:53]
B
With every Byronic hero, you know, you never know when, like, an odd show of violence is going to burst forth at the most unlikely or inopportune or inappropriate of situations.
- [61:05]
A
Exactly. Exactly. But the fact that she hears the laugh and thinks it's coming from her pillow next to her, and then he wakes up and says, what have you done to me? Okay, so, guys, Jane, the fire, the bed, put it together. Okay. All right. And that is how volume one ends. And of course, we have the mystery of who actually set the fire.
- [61:30]
B
It's pretty obvious. And without giving anything away, it seems pretty obvious that people are trying to hush this up.
- [61:36]
A
Yes.
- [61:37]
B
And that the explanations that are being given for why did the bed randomly catch fire are not satisfactory.
- [61:42]
A
Yeah. The master was reading in bed.
- [61:45]
B
Right.
- [61:45]
A
With a candle. Now, Jane suspects Grace Poole and she. Her imagination goes to. Why is he protecting Grace Poole? Did they have a love affair? At one point.
- [61:53]
B
Which, again, but that doesn't really work because Grace Poole is.
- [61:55]
A
She's not a train. But, yeah, her mind goes there, because that's the Bluebeard thing.
- [62:00]
B
Because he would have the. He's potentially the kind of guy who would have it on with a servant.
- [62:04]
A
Yeah. Is he a master who just has love affairs and casts them all aside, essentially, you know, condemning them to. To a type of death. Right. All right. So the next section starts. And she wakes up the next morning feeling very close to Rochester and looked eager to see him, only to find out he's gone. He's gone to the Ingrams. And Jane is hit with pangs of jealousy and asking things like, is she beautiful? Will they get married, do you think? What's happening? So. So she's starting to admit to herself she has some feelings, and when she
- [62:34]
B
actually meets Ms. Ingram, her worst fears are confirmed.
- [62:37]
A
Yes.
- [62:37]
B
Because, I mean, it's. It's almost like you almost kind of suspected that moment that. That particular morning when she sat down to write the chapter, Charlotte Bronte had just looked up the word foil in a literary dictionary or something.
- [62:53]
A
Oh, it's interesting that Blanche's name means white and yet she's dark.
- [62:59]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's. She's.
- [63:02]
A
I'll have more to say about that.
- [63:03]
B
What did she say? We can say she has a false purity yeah. Hypocritical purity about her.
- [63:08]
A
About her fake. And we already talked about that. But in chapter 16, Jane admits that she has a secret love hidden in her breast. And she said it will devour her. So we're back to that consuming fire. Right. So. So she is aware of it. She is smart enough to realize this man is not going to choose me over Blanche Ingram, who has everything going for her. She's like the ideal Victorian woman. I'm an idiot and I'm going to put down this fire.
- [63:36]
B
Yeah. And she even rebukes herself. And she decides she's going to put her artistic talents to work. What was sort of in an exercise of moral discipline, you know, draw one likeness of Blanche Ingram and then another of you plain inconsiderable and see how stupid. Discardable. And just see like what ridiculous comparison this is that I could compete with a great lady.
- [64:02]
A
Right.
- [64:03]
B
And. Yeah, but that's. That, that's the moment. Well, I won't get ahead of myself, but so far in the book, that is the moment where she sounds the most like Helen.
- [64:12]
A
I agree. I agree. So it's going to be interesting to see what. What happens. Especially since she was the water that put out the fire. Very, very interesting. So they come, like you said, her worst fears are realized. And then they come. It's like a three week party. And she's like, I just want to disappear. And then she finds out she's instructed actually to be there. He wants to see her, he wants her part of the party. And she's just watching them. And they treat her pretty terribly.
- [64:41]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [64:42]
A
Oh, she's too stupid to play anything.
- [64:44]
B
Mean Girls, 1840s edition.
- [64:46]
A
Exactly. And yet, if we look closely, there is some interesting things going on. So when Jane is asking Ms. Fairfax about Blanche Ingram in chapter 16, she says something like, she plays very technically proficient. Well. Or Mr. Rochester says that. And that's an insult, actually. So, you know, Jane has this kind of natural realness in everything about Blanche
- [65:10]
B
Ingram and is a surface attraction.
- [65:12]
A
Yep, yep. She's all surface attractions. And, you know, Jane has this really intense moment where she says, if I really believed he loved her and she loved him, I could just let him go. But I don't think they do. I don't. I think she likes his money and I think he's doing it because she makes sense. You know, he needs a wife and she ticks all the boxes. Right. But she says, I don't think that Blanche is capable of making him happy. And then, then of course, she's like, I know who would make him happy. Somebody who really gets him and understands. And of course, she. She feels that that person is. Is her. But this is a. This is a real. I don't know if I want to say it's a spiritual crisis, but this is a crisis in her development.
- [65:53]
B
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's an emotional crisis. Yeah.
- [65:57]
A
What do I do with these feelings I have? Because this isn't just, I'm gonna stand up for myself and be vindicated and not be stepped on. This is I love somebody and maybe he doesn't love me back. And maybe I was a complete idiot. Maybe I'm just a stupid governess fresh off the farm who gets a crush on my boss. And this was never going to happen. And the first guy that paid attention to you, dummy, you fell for and you know, all the kinds of self reproachment that you would expect there. But one thing I really want to highlight because it's a very symbolic scene is the charades.
- [66:29]
B
A game of pretense.
- [66:30]
A
A game of pretense. Okay. And then I think what happens with the gypsy is that. That's the charades just continued in another field.
- [66:38]
B
It is. I think we're meant to understand that.
- [66:40]
A
Oh, good. It always means a lot to me when you support my. My crazy thing, my crazy stuff that I say. Okay, here it is. I found it. Chapter 18. So I remember the first time I read this at like, I don't know, what was I, 19 years old? I didn't understand what the charades were. So this is not our charades. This is much more tableau vivant font. Right. And they're gonna have three scenes, each of which is like the first syllable. And then they put it together. So they put it together as bridewell. Okay. But so we have three. The magic fairy tale number of three, three scenes. And I'm just gonna describe what they are and we can talk about the symbolism of them as we go on because we don't know enough yet. And there's some foreshadowing happening here. However. Scene one. Scene one is what, Mr. Banks, what is happening happening? It's a wedding. Yeah, it's a wedding. Okay. And not only is it a wedding, Blanche Ingram's the bride and Rochester's the groom. And, you know, Jane is just like cheating her heart out right here. This is terrible.
- [67:39]
B
And we're meant to understand that the Ingrams want this match.
- [67:42]
A
Absolutely. They do, because he's got money. And we know that the family has position, but not money.
- [67:48]
B
She's the kind of family that, you know, if the guy has money, they don't necessarily inquire too deeply into his character.
- [67:54]
A
No, exactly. So again, everything about. About this is so typically like Victorian. Right. So the family does have money in position, but Blanche does not because the estate is entailed on the older brother. So she has no money to bring to a marriage, which would significantly limit her options. She's beautiful. That's what she can offer as well as the connections. And so, you know, they're nearby and he's got money and an estate and. And you know, there you are. And she's. She's kind of older. So this is. This might be her one shot hot.
- [68:23]
B
She's 25. I think we're meant to understand she's 25. I think it's a 25. I mean, which in those days for a woman would be getting a bit long in the tooth maybe.
- [68:32]
A
Very much so. I mean, you know, Lady Catherine Deburr loses her mind when Lizzie Ben is 20 and not married. So, you know.
- [68:38]
B
Most unusual. Most unusual.
- [68:41]
A
All right, so poor Jane, right? This is like her worst nightmare. She's watching them. Okay. And so of course it's marriage. Then the second one comes and that's the courtship of Rebecca and Isaac. So another. Another marriage. And yet a slightly different one because it was. It's an act of kindness from Rebecca that indicates she is the chosen one for Isaac.
- [69:05]
B
Correct.
- [69:06]
A
Okay, so we'll leave that. And then the third scene is Rochester in chains with his head down. Okay. And so they guessed this is bride from the wedding. Well, from Rebecca and Isaac. So Bridewell and because Bridewell is the name of a prison. So Bridewell Prison. And they. They got it right. And. But of course we have the idea that there's a marriage.
- [69:29]
B
Charades were a lot like this is Byzantine level of elaborate charades here.
- [69:35]
A
I'm just for one glass.
- [69:36]
B
It just had like chains hanging around. And yeah, I was thinking, see, these chapters were the most confusing to me just because I was like, where are they getting the props? I'm getting the scoured. I know it's the wrong question, but
- [69:48]
A
yeah, they did say they.
- [69:50]
B
Sure they have the house chains lying around an old mansion.
- [69:53]
A
Yeah, it's in a dungeon somewhere.
- [69:55]
B
You need to bring this back, though. Actually, I know that we need to
- [69:57]
A
do it at camp.
- [69:58]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [69:59]
A
At House of Humane Letters camp. We have to have the kids do charade. Some tableau vivant. That'd be hilarious. And then you and I could be the people Having to guess what it is is. And we wouldn't get it. Okay, so we have marriage. We have some kind of test for who's the worthy one. And then we have the idea of Rochester in chains. So we just. We'll just leave that all out there. And then we have the fortune teller. Okay, well, then we have two pages of all about how fake Blanche Ingram is. Let me look over it. No, I'm not going to look over at the clock. We're not going to just read this. But she's fake. We all know Blanche Ingram, ladies. We all know her. And she's a mean girl, too. She's mean to Jane for no reason because Jane is not a threat to her. She also doesn't like Adele. She's mean to her and says, why is she here? She should be in school.
- [70:46]
B
Blanche Ingram likes Blanche Ingram. You know, But, I mean, you don't
- [70:49]
A
like this movie, but I'm gonna say this anyway. You remember in Sound of Music when we meet Captain von Trapps?
- [70:54]
B
It just came up in class today again.
- [70:56]
A
Okay, yeah, but. But his fiance doesn't like the kids and wants to ship him off to school. Like that's a classic indication. This is an evil step mothered. Do not marry the person that wants to ship your kids off to school. All right, so another Beauty and the Beast moment. She's thinking about him in other points as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master. I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look at. It had formerly been my endeavor to study all sides of his character, to take the bad with the good, and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once were only like keen condiments in a choice dish. Their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something, was it sinister or sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression that opened upon a careful observer now and then in his eye and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed. That's something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering among volcano looking hills and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape. That's something I at intervals beheld, still with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare, to divine it. And I thought Ms. Ingram happy because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure. Explore its secrets and analyze their nature.
- [72:23]
B
I don't think that Blanche Ingram is the abyss staring type. I don't think she has that. That power of reflectiveness.
- [72:30]
A
No, no, not at all. Not at all. Okay, let's. I'm looking over this stuff. Okay, so then let's end with the. The gypsy scene.
- [72:39]
B
Yeah. One of the most famous parts in the book. Right.
- [72:41]
A
It upsets a lot of readers because they're like, why is he messing with her? But I think if you look at it very closely, the second she walks in, she knows something's going on. She's suspicious. Yeah.
- [72:51]
B
Yeah. And nonetheless though, I mean, it's. I mean it is a test. And she passes because she's. She's entirely honest and, and sincere throughout.
- [73:00]
A
Yep. And so she. But she does say she's guarded. So she's not headstrong, passionate Jane. And he's testing her. And. And she says, I feel like you're trying to lead me on to something. Right. Like he's trying to get her to say he. She's got her eye on somebody.
- [73:16]
B
Yeah. And. And she's also just not a game player by nature. That's sort of what this series of chapters highlighted for me.
- [73:24]
A
But interesting that he says about her forehead when he's in the form of a gypsy especially. Let's think back to what we said is the picture of a well ordered man. It's reason on top of the horse holding the reins. He says the forehead declares reason sits firm and holds the reinforcement. Boom. Okay. Reason sits firm and holds the reins. And she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously like true heathens as they are. And the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things. But judgment shall still have the last word in every argument and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake, shock and fire may pass by, but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates states of the conscience. And so he's saying, you're very in control of yourself. I'm not going to be able to tempt you to. To. To break your conscience here. And then he says, leave me, Ms. Air. The play is played out. So that's it. It's another charade. And she says, have I been sleeping? Have I been dreaming? What is happening? And then we see the Jane who stands up for herself and she says, I believe you've been trying to draw me out or in you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir. And he says, do you forgive me? And she says, I cannot tell. I have to think it over. I shall try to forgive you. But it was not right. Now I love that moment because it's not just Helen Burns. I will just take whatever comes at me. And it's not, Jane, I'm gonna stand up for myself at all costs. It's I will forgive you. But this was not right. So I really like her in this scene. You've been very careful.
- [75:04]
B
These chapters made me see, I think, at something of CS Lewis's point, that he drew between this character, not the novel as a whole, but this character in Mansfield park and how Charlotte would have. Charlotte Bronte would have succeeded better with Fanny Price. And didn't these chapters have almost kind of a Mansfield park feel about them?
- [75:27]
A
Oh, no, you're totally right. A house party and putting on a theater.
- [75:29]
B
It's strange. It's more gothic and everything, but yes, still, it was. It was the same. Yeah. Kind of frivolous set of, you know,
- [75:36]
A
gentry Fanny has a.
- [75:38]
B
Entertaining themselves and also passive aggressively judging
- [75:40]
A
the temptation to break her conscience. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. No, that's well done.
- [75:45]
B
And I think Fanny would have. I think she would have responded somewhat the same way to the same interrogation.
- [75:50]
A
Yep, yep. So he says to her, oh, don't worry, you didn't say anything to embarrass yourself. You were very, very careful. Very careful. And Jane is thinking to herself, well, I thought something was off. I suspected a masquerade. Right, so. So Jane can see when things are artifice.
- [76:08]
B
Yeah, she has. She's a good eye for masks.
- [76:10]
A
That's right. That's right. But she, interestingly enough, she thought it was Grace Poole.
- [76:15]
B
She does.
- [76:16]
A
Right. And turns out to be Mr. Rochester.
- [76:17]
B
We still don't know exactly what Grace Pool's function here is.
- [76:20]
A
Much mystery. So then Rochester's like, no, no, no, don't leave. Stay a moment. I want to talk to you. So now he wants to have a real face to face conversation with her, but something interrupts, and that is finding out you have a visitor.
- [76:32]
B
Someone has arrived from the west and
- [76:35]
A
he loses his mind and says, jane, I've got a blow. I've got a blow. Oh, lean on me, sir. Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before. Let me have it now. Okay, so this is an echo of earlier when he fell off the horse. Why not if he fell off a horse here as well? So she helps him and then he says a lot of weird things. Right. Like, what are they doing in there? Are they, like, upset? And she's like, no, they're laughing and talking. What's Mr. Mason doing? No, he's also laughing and talking. They're not acting strange? No. Jane. Jane, if all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do? Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could. He half smiled. But if I were to go to them and they only looked at me coldly, whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them? I rather think not, sir. I should have more pleasure in staying with you. To comfort me? Yes, sir. To comfort you as well as I could. And if they laid. Laid you under a ban for adhering to me, I probably should know nothing about their ban, and if I did, I should care nothing about it. Then you would dare censure for my sake? I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence, as. As you, I am sure do. Okay, so, like, you know, he knows that she's the kind of woman who's going to follow her conscience and not violate it, and there's still a lot of mystery to unfold. We'll just leave it at that.
- [77:59]
B
All right, this is. I like these. I like these chapters a lot.
- [78:03]
A
I do, too.
- [78:03]
B
No, this is. This is. Yeah, I. Anyway, I. I won't say anything more.
- [78:10]
A
Well done, all of you guys.
- [78:11]
B
But I'm. I'll just. No, I'll say this. I'm glad people pressured us into doing this book, too.
- [78:17]
A
I don't that I would.
- [78:17]
B
I don't think I. Yeah, I think it would. I would have thought it too much of a challenge, but no, no, I'm
- [78:21]
A
really happy that we did this, and I'm so proud of you guys and glad you're all enjoying it. You can join us back here next week. We'll continue with the next set of chapters, chapter 20 through 26. And, yeah, just keep trying to read things symbolically, as you guys are doing. You're doing a great job with it. And Charlotte Bronte is making it clear that that is how we are supposed to be reading it. Right? She's drawing all these characters larger than life and exaggerating them because she's trying to show us the symbolic significance of this journey. So what shall happen in the next set of chapters? We'll have to wait and find out. Stick around to the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks has a poem picked out for us. And go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to sign up for our newsletter and see the various webinars and classes we're offering right now. Sign up for Addison Hornsch's webinar and you can go to patreon.com theliterarylife to join our Patreon and support this podcast which is 100% member supported. We have no ads at all so I don't care who your cell phone company is and I will not try to persuade you. All right gang, until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world. Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcast brought to you by our loyal patreon sponsors. Visit HouseOfHumaneLetters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcast schedules and more. And keep up with Cindy@morningtimeformoms.com Join the Conversation at our member only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com theliterarylife to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and check out our sister podcasts, the New Mason Jar and the well Read Poem. And now for a poem read by poet Thomas Banks.
- [80:28]
B
The Long War by Laurie Lee Less passionate the long war throws its burning thorn about all men caught in one grief we share one wound and cry one dialect of pain we have forgot who fired the house whose easy mischief spilt first blood. Under one raging roof we lie, the fault no longer understood but as our twisted arms embrace the desert where our cities stood, Death's family likeness in each face must show at last our brotherhood.