← The Literary Life Podcast
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- [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 am Angelina, not Bertha Mason, Rochester, Stanford.
- [01:37]
B
I am not St. John Rivers.
- [01:39]
A
I can attest to that. Yeah, you're definitely not.
- [01:42]
B
I think I would be him before I was Rochester, though. I mean, it doesn't matter.
- [01:46]
A
If you had a temptation.
- [01:47]
B
If I had a temptation, it would be in that direction.
- [01:49]
A
Yep, yep, yep. Right before I press record, just so you guys know, Mr. Banks was assuring me that he does not have a secret wife in the upstairs of our.
- [01:57]
B
Not even one. Not even one.
- [01:59]
A
Yeah. And then he was surprised to find out. I did not find that terribly comforting. I just didn't like that your mind went there at all.
- [02:04]
B
No. Even before I knew you, I never did. I mean, I. It was a. It was a relatively small apartment. I wouldn't have been able to, you know, spare the space. It's kind of funny. I've noticed that a theme in our working relationship and marriage. I say something reassuring, which turns out to have the opposite effect of what I intend to, you know, free time.
- [02:26]
A
I feel like I'm in an upside down world. Yeah.
- [02:28]
B
Yeah.
- [02:29]
A
I don't know, ladies. You got my back on this. Would you also not find it reassuring if your husband was like, just so you know, I don't have a lunatic wife in the upstairs attic. I. I hear sounds at night. You know how imaginative I am.
- [02:41]
B
You are very imaginative.
- [02:42]
A
I'm going to have to go in the attic right after this podcast and make sure Bertha Mason's not up there or any version of her. Thanks a lot. Well, if you didn't figure out we're talking about Jane Eyre today, today we're going to talk about chapters 27 to 33. And just so you guys know, I am quite under the weather today. Actually, I. We have pushed recording this episode to the last possible minute to be able to get it out this week because I have not been feeling well and we kept hoping I would feel better, but alas I do not. But I really didn't want to disappoint you guys by pushing us out a week on the podcast. So here we are with this episode. But it will be a shorter episode than the one last week and I hope that's okay. But we will hit the major things here and you guys are continuing to just impress me and do amazing work over on the Discord. And yeah, we don't have to follow every thread in, in this book, we'll just hit the main ones and, and lay out the framework once again. This podcast is brought to you by House of Humane Letters, which is our business, our day jobs. And you can go over to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com and to see what we've got going on. You can sign up for Jen Rogers webinar on Pilgrim's Regress that we talked about last time. You can sign up for Jason Baxter's fall class. You can sign up for any of our year long classes. You can purchase some back webinars and you go to cassiodoraspress.com our publishing wing, to pick up Jason Baxter's books. All right, let's just jump in with some commonplace quotes. Mr. Banks, what do you have?
- [04:16]
B
So I was rereading not long ago, some of W. Somerset Maugham's Writer's Notebook. And he delivers himself of the following judgment. In the preface, he says, quote, I am always suspicious of a novelist's theories. I have never known them to be anything other than a justification of his own shortcomings. So a writer who has no gift for the contrivance of a plausible story will tell you that storytelling is the least important part of the novelist's equipment. And if he is devoid of humor, he will moan that humor is the death of fiction.
- [04:55]
A
I like that.
- [04:56]
B
Yeah.
- [04:57]
A
Yeah, I like that.
- [04:58]
B
Yeah. It's kind of Ryan slightly cynical observation that Somerset mom is, you know, so fond of.
- [05:04]
A
Well, you know, not to get on like a huge digression, but when I was younger, because I am such an idealistic person myself, as you know, I think I thought that people have a set of principles that they're committed to and then they, they act according to those principles. And the older I get, I realize it's actually the reverse in practice, that people have a way of being and then they look for some sort of philosophy to hang to justify the way that they act.
- [05:30]
B
Oh, I think so. But very often that's the, that's the case anyway.
- [05:33]
A
It just. I feel like I'm tracking with Somerset mom here. You know, the philosophy of fiction has a whole lot to do with what their personal gifts are.
- [05:43]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [05:45]
A
My commonplace quote comes from more GK Chesterton. Not the same essay as last time. It comes from a book he wrote, a small volume called the Victorian Age in Literature. Which.
- [05:54]
B
One of his best books.
- [05:55]
A
Trying to remember. Did you buy me that?
- [05:58]
B
Yes, that was. There was his contribution to the. To Oxford's home university library. And it's. Yeah, it's a really good introduction to the general field of Victorian prosecution. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction.
- [06:12]
A
I've read it before, and I was just kind of thumbing through it today. And one of the things, he's just a huge fan of the female Victorian writers and really sees this as the age that the female writer comes really to dominate. And I think that's totally true. And I think history has shown that, like, when you think of. Just when you think of who are the great Victorian writers, most of them are women. Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte. George Eliot.
- [06:40]
B
Gaskell.
- [06:41]
A
Gaskell, right. And yes, there are men. Dickens. Okay, obviously, everybody would name Dickens, but I'm going to be careful. Thackeray, Trollope. Again, great writers in their time, but not those names don't come to mind as much.
- [06:53]
B
I don't think Thackeray has as many writers. Readers today as either of the Bronte sisters, which is kind of interesting since he helped discover them. It's.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, right. Right. So just, you know. Anyway, Chesterton talks a lot about what he thinks is going on there. And so this. Well, this is just. This is just Chesterton being Chesterton. He says Charlotte Bronte dedicated Jane Eyre to the author of Vanity Fair. I should hesitate to say that Charlotte Bronte's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I think it might well be maintained that it's a better story. All sorts of inquiring asses equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the new nature of the novel, whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels were really written by George Lewis. I will cheerfully answer for the fact that if they had been written by George Lewis, no one would ever have read them.
- [07:44]
B
Wow.
- [07:45]
A
But he goes on. Okay, so I'm gonna skip a whole bunch of things. This is. This is the point. Why he says that a man could not have written. And of course, the Bronte sisters had also written under male pseudonyms. The. The Bell brothers.
- [07:59]
B
Yeah, Her, Ellis and Acton.
- [08:01]
A
Right. And people did think that they were Men. In fact, didn't people think that Bramwell Bronte had written Wuthering theories?
- [08:12]
B
There was kind of a half baked theory that was floated around mostly by word of mouth. I don't think many people like swore to this in print. But yeah, there were people who thought that Branwell, who is the diseased and kind of, you know, disturbed brother, the one brother of the Brontes, that he had written everything and that he was kind of the genius behind all of these pseudonyms.
- [08:34]
A
Okay, so Chesterton goes on here just to say that that's ridiculous because the novel is a peculiar female form of art. And then he says this. The truth is, I think that the modern novel, by which he means Victorian novels is a new thing. Not new in its essence for that is a philosophy for fools, but new in the sense that it lets loose many of the things that are old. It is a hardy and exhaustive overhauling of that part of human existence which has always been the woman's province, or rather kingdom, the play of personalities in private. The real difference between Tommy and Joe.
- [09:11]
B
That's a lovely passage.
- [09:12]
A
It is and I think that's spot on for Jane Eyre. Like this, this. I'm having such an interesting experience rereading it because in the 30 years since I read it last I've read so many more Victorian novels and this has abled me to feel the startling effect of this writing, if that makes sense. Where if you're, I think if you're not used to these older books it might seem old and quaint but because I am so used to reading old books, I'm like holy cow. Each page, I'm like holy cow. This is just so. Every page is full of fire and we are seeing the interior life of a woman in the way that we haven't before.
- [09:53]
B
You know, I was also thinking that this book is, I think it's, it and Wuthering Heights are both very well designed books. And I would say also that this book, which, and I don't say this of many, many novels at all. I don't think there's anything extraneous in here. I, I don't think you could get rid of a chapter here or there without diminishing. Diminishing the effect.
- [10:19]
A
No, I agree.
- [10:20]
B
And it's, it's a longer, maybe slightly longer than average novel. I mean my copy runs to 575 pages. I don't know, you can say that of many, many 500 and some odd page novels, almost even great ones I can think of like that could have been shorter.
- [10:35]
A
Well, I mean, Dickens, who I adore, could definitely. Yeah.
- [10:38]
B
I think there are many Dickens books that couldn't benefit from, I would say. Dostoevsky also often strikes me that way, though. I think again, they're both masters. Right.
- [10:50]
A
So I do think Chesterton is onto something here. And further on in that same essay, he says that if they had been given enough time, they could have turned domesticity into a fairyland. And I think what he means by that is it could have been another world, quote, unquote. Right. That we could go to in novels and understand the domestic life. It's sort of the same contrast, if you will, that people draw between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Because the Odyssey has so many more domestic concerns.
- [11:24]
B
It does. There was some, some of our listeners might know this already. There was a, you could call him kind of an ingenious crank in the late Victorian period named Samuel Butler. The guy who wrote Erewhon. Yeah. And he, he developed a theory that the Odyssey was the work of a Greek speaking Sicilian girl. Why. Why Sicilian especially? I don't know, but that she had written it as a kind of unauthorized to the Iliad. And he said that the. Yeah, the domestic passages, the female portrayals and there of Penelope and Nausicaa and others are such that no man could create them. It's a theory that's never really caught on, but it's, it's out there.
- [12:09]
A
And I think what's interesting here, particularly in, in terms of a gothic novel, is romances. Medieval romances are operating on the principle of the journey of the soul. And it's all being externalized in terms of a battle. Right. So again, common metaphor. We're all engaged in spiritual warfare. This is a spiritual battle. The life is a spiritual battle. And it externalized that in a series of images. Right. We're all the everyman night, we're on our journey. Dragons have to be slain, grails have to be found, all that sort of thing. And I think what ends up happening here in Jane Eyre is she's taking all those same things, but she's showing that that same kind of spiritual battle, the journey of the soul, it happens in domestic settings too.
- [12:57]
B
Yes. Yeah, I would, I would agree with that.
- [13:00]
A
And one of the things that I really work hard in my medieval lit class to teach my students, and I think that you guys are doing an amazing job with that in this book you're seeing that is to remember that the knights, the monsters, all the different obstacles that your hero encounters on his journey of the soul in a Medieval Romance. They're all externalized versions of the battle in his own soul. They're. They're not others. We're very fond of talking about, you know, monsters as others. Who is being othering in this book. But it's their own soul projected 3D. You know, I mean, I could give examples of that, but I don't want to, like, go on this whole long digression. I hear the audience go on the digression, go on the digression. But a lot of times I'll point out that a certain night that the hero is encountering actually has the same physical description as him. Right. Or something like that. Are the same. Like, hey, here's just the embodiment of the struggle he was having two chapters over and so over and over, what you see is, I'll use Sulston Easton's line, the real line between good and evil is drawn through the human soul. Right? It's your own heart. That's where the real battle between good and evil. Not me and not me. I'm good, and those people over there are bad. Me, I'm good and bad. I've got struggles in my own soul that have to be overcome and battled. And so I think that's really important to remember in Jane Eyre, that the struggles that she is dealing with are really just projections of her own inner state. This is what she has to battle to overcome. Which is why it was important to read Bertha Mason as a symbol of Jane's own passion, that it's a revisiting of the struggle in volume one of the Red Room. And of course, if we miss that, at the beginning of chapter seven, Jane, chapter 27, Jane goes to sleep and dreams about the Red Room. And she literally says, I'm right back in the Red room. Right. Because it's the same threat to be. To be consumed by this. By this passion.
- [14:55]
B
And here was something in the. So in the confrontation between her and Rochester following the wedding that doesn't, you know, come off, though, of course. I mean, yes, she's surprised. She doesn't seem as scandalized in some ways as you would expect a heroine, a literary heroine of this period to be. I mean, here's another thing. She doesn't seem. Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think she seems shamed or embarrassed.
- [15:25]
A
No, she doesn't.
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B
She never seems to be asking, what will everybody think?
- [15:30]
A
Never.
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B
Which in an age, you know, famous for its sensitivity to proprieties and social decorum and things like this, I mean, she almost just found herself in a bigamous union. But she's not. You don't imagine her blushing up to her ears.
- [15:46]
A
That actually is one of the scandalous things about the book at the time that it was written, because, as you say, a woman is supposed to be extremely concerned with what will everyone say. Right. The maintaining the. The purity of her reputation is. Is the number one thing. Right. You don't go off with a man unless you're escorted with your brother. Right. Because what would people say? Even if you're innocent of any wrongdoing, what would people say? What would people think? My reputation is that fragile. Jane is far more concerned with what do I think about myself.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And her decisions that she makes is about, can I live with this? Will I still have my integrity intact if I make these decisions? Which, again, is a like, go, Charlotte Bronte. That. That's amazing. This is where some other critic would say, you see, she foreshadows and anticipates here, modern psychology. I don't really think that's what it is, because I think it's a journey of the soul being projected. But I think it's. It might. It might. It might encapsulate that. But it's more than that, I would say, you know, because certainly there are psychological parts of the journey of the soul, but it's not primarily that.
- [16:55]
B
It's a novel that is much concerned with questions of conduct and moral integrity without being at all concerned with manners and social niceties.
- [17:04]
A
Well said. Well said. That's very well said. Like, so in Jane Austen, there's a whole lot of concern about manners and whether or not that does or does not reflect the person's character, because sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't. And learning to see the differences, a lot of the journey that the heroines are on in those books. But you're right, you're right. We don't see that. I mean, yeah, yeah, maybe I'll wait till we get to those. To those chapters. The other thing that I find myself thinking about in these chapters is the fact that it is a romantic novel. And she's going to make that extremely explicit in volume three, when the River Sisters is sitting there reading German Romantic authors. She could not be signaling more to us how, you know, the framework for reading this. And I. I've said this before, and it really is outside of the bounds of talking about this book to go into all the nuances of what actually romanticism is, because not everything that it is, is at play in this book. But I do talk about this in my classes. It's very easy to reduce it and think that romanticism is reason versus feelings. And I know a lot of people teach Jane Eyre that way. But I think that we are far enough in the book now that we can see that that is. That that is not the case. Because there are moments in the book where she seems to be rejecting rational things and saying, I'm going to stand up for my feelings. But there's other moments when she rejects how she feels and goes in the other direction. Right. So if this was really a book about feelings versus reason. Right. Then in chapter 27, she just said, you're right, Rochester. Let's follow our hearts. There is. You're not really married to this woman. She's a lunatic.
- [18:55]
B
I will be your. You know, I will be your Celine Verrand.
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A
And let's run off together. Let's follow our hearts. If that's really what this book was about, then it would have ended right there.
- [19:05]
B
Yeah.
- [19:06]
A
Society be damned. I'm your wife in my heart. Let's go do that.
- [19:11]
B
I feel myself cringing as I say this, but I think that ending would have satisfied a certain type of reader who is numerous, not in the Victorian era, but I think it would today, probably.
- [19:21]
A
I think that's kind of Adrienne Rich's point in her essay when she says people think of Jane Eyre as just the Thornfield chapters and forget that that's one scene in a 500 page book.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah.
- [19:31]
A
Right. And so, like we've left Thornfield behind in volume three. She's. She's gone to a whole other part of her life. Yes. But let's. Let's go now. I did misspeak last time and I said that chapter 27 was the last of volume two, but I wrote it wrong in my notes. So volume two ended when the wedding didn't come off. Chapter 26. In chapter 27, we're now in volume three. So volume three starts with this goodbye scene. This is a really long chapter. And there it was a ton of stuff.
- [20:02]
B
Yeah.
- [20:03]
A
So I.
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B
It was some. It was some hard going, I will admit. Yeah.
- [20:06]
A
But we, of course, we finally get the backstory.
- [20:08]
B
Yeah.
- [20:08]
A
And again, I think we're going to see the way that Charlotte Bronte is playing with that convention of the sentimental novel and undermining it as we go. Because you've been saying the standard sentimental romantic novel is now going to have your Byronic hero explain the extenuating circumstances. I'm not really a bad boy. I got. I got suckered into this.
- [20:26]
B
Yeah. And you realize that he's been. Well, no. I mean, he has done something unconscionable at his own telling, while at the same time, I mean, he had some, you could say, familial pressures, which made the temptation to do what he did difficult to resist. Is that a fair summary?
- [20:46]
A
Right, right.
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B
Yeah.
- [20:48]
A
And so to have Jane again. How would the sentimental novel have gone? It would have gone. You poor thing. You're the victim in this. There are extenuating circumstances. Society be damned. Let's go be together. But she doesn't do that, nor does she ferociously judge him.
- [21:05]
B
No, she doesn't. She doesn't read him a sermon on the proprieties of marriage.
- [21:11]
A
And what I keep trying to say, and we'll finally say when we get to the last episode, there is something more sophisticated going on here than just reason versus passion.
- [21:21]
B
Yeah. It's, in a weird way, a line from another book that came to mind is the struggle to reconcile the prose and poetry of life. Is something of that occurring here? I'm thinking of. That's from Howard's End. To reconcile the prose and poetry of life.
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A
Yes. Is there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay. I think I see what you're saying.
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B
I know. I know the two books don't really have much in common, but it seems that Jane Eyre is a character who, though she never articulates it quite like that, that is. Does want to. Yeah. Is struggling to be an integrated person who lives with the. You know, with the approval of her own conscience and religious principles. As she sees.
- [22:04]
A
I think that it's important to see that she is being guided by a sense of what is right and what she can live with. Right. She keeps coming back to that right. My. My own sense of my integrity and will I even be myself if I appreciate that? But I also want us to see that she didn't turn into Helen Burns. This is. She's not a snow. Yeah. This isn't like, I want this, but I will dodge my passions and go
- [22:27]
B
forward, bury myself in some kind of gratuitous and willfully undertaken sacrifice.
- [22:34]
A
See that while she has maintained her integrity all through this, these chapters, when she's with the Rivers, she's still thinking about Rochester.
- [22:42]
B
Yeah. Yeah. She hasn't put him behind her.
- [22:45]
A
She's not put him behind her. She has taken herself out of the fire of the temptation. But she's. She hasn't turned into ice, which I think is going to become quite apparent because in these chapters she keeps calling sinjin ice and marble and marble and statue. But first, chapter 27. So one of the things that I thought about was with the. In the Bluebird fairy tale, when the bride realizes she's been ensnared, she runs to her brother. So I thought this was interesting that Bertha Mason's brother shows up but gets attacked. Okay, so he's not able to rescue anybody. In a sense, you could argue that he has just rescued Jane by coming forward and saying he's already married. And then. Because St. John Rivers in this section of chapters is going to become her cousin slash brother. Yeah, but he's a brother figure. She says that at the end of the chapter 33, you know, I have, I have a brother now. Then he sort of becomes the brother who is protecting her in that situation too. So there's a, there's a lot of interesting things going up. But. Okay, so she, she has this dream, she goes to sleep and she says, I'm not Edward Rochester's bride and I have awakened out of a most glorious dream. So I started thinking about all the Sleeping Beauty references and I looked for them in chapter 27. And what I saw was she is now wakening. Okay, so, so she even says to stay with him would be to stay in this impossible dream, right? So she enters this thorny hall, right, with the hedges around it, this castle of Sleeping Beauty. And she's been in this dream, which has also been equated with a nightmare through all these chapters because a lot of these dreams is our nightmarish. And. And now she's like, no, to stay with you would be to stay in this dream would be to choose to be Sleeping Beauty. And I'm going to wake up and leave. Which is just a fantastic inversion of all of that.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Before she goes downstairs to talk with him though, I mean, look at some of this language. Conscience turned tyrant, held passion by the throat. Boom.
- [24:50]
B
Yeah, right. I thought that was an important line.
- [24:52]
A
Okay, so this is somebody who's choosing not to follow her passion right now because it's that type of self destructive passion which we've seen in the red room before. And with Bertha Mason, sin. And then she says, no, no, no, look, it's better to pluck out your right eye, cut off your right hand. Right? And that of course is, is the reference to if you're tempted to sin, it's better to pluck out your eye or pluck out your hand. And so she's, she's seeing this as a very real temptation. And it is. I mean, it's a heartbreak. It's heartbreaking when she's thinking, all I've ever wanted is to be loved and to have a home and I have it, and now I can't have it and I have to leave. It's. It's just heartbreaking. So, of course, when she gets it back in volume in the next few chapters, she gets a home again. It's all the better. So she comes down and Rochester just says, well, you're a very passionate person. I expected a scene. I expected tears, fire, yell at me. But she doesn't. She doesn't.
- [25:46]
B
In fact, she's a lesser writer would have done.
- [25:50]
A
Says, I had become icy cold in my chamber. Right. So she has turned into ice here. She won't stay there, guys.
- [25:55]
B
But I think a less talented writer would have done exactly that and had the, you know, reproving him and. Yeah. And George Eliot even says that. Yeah. Have you ever noticed in the. In her. This is George Eliot in her famous essay, silly novels by female novelists or something like that. Anyway, she. She says that the heroines in these novels are always quoting, you know, tags from the fathers and, you know, the latest volume of servants in reproval of the men who are trying to seduce them ungallantly and things like that. But she doesn't descend to that kind of. That kind of cheap, well, stage romance here.
- [26:39]
A
I also think it's important that she gave in to her raging and making a scene with Mrs. Reed earlier in the red room. Right. And she's not doing that here. The temptation is to do that, but she's not doing that. The temptation is greater than just, will she be his mistress? But will I give in to all the things I'm feeling? Will I yell and scream, she doesn't do any of that. She doesn't do any of that. And then he says, and this is fantastic because this is a reference to Pamela. I just want you to know I'm not some rake who set up a fake marriage to entrap you. Like this was legit. I intended this. And maybe I was a fool thinking I didn't have to tell you up front about my wife, but I was going to tell you eventually.
- [27:17]
B
And yeah, as horrible as, like, his actions up to this point have been, there is enough nuance in them to make you wonder if he might be in some ways a redeemable character.
- [27:27]
A
Right? And then he says, I know what you're thinking. That man has nearly made me his mistress. I must become ice to him.
- [27:34]
B
Right?
- [27:35]
A
But then. But we see that she doesn't she is. She is self controlled and she maintains her sense of principle, but she's still in her heart like I'm melting this guy. I don't want to leave him. He's in pain. I forgive you. But she's not telling him that.
- [27:48]
B
Yeah. She's not repulsed by him. In fact, if it weren't for the impediment, you know, that stands between them, you, she would absolutely still marry him.
- [27:56]
A
Right. So she is not giving into all of her various temptations to fire, but nor has she become a block of ice. We also, there's something very interesting about the way he says, you know, my kindness to Bertha is what got me because I put her at Thornfield Hall. I could have put her in this other place, but I had scruples because I knew it was not the healthiest place and I thought she'd die. Basically. I made me think of Henry VIII and Catherine. I put her in some terrible place that you know she's gonna die.
- [28:26]
B
Yeah.
- [28:27]
A
And hesnic atmosphere doesn't do that. So he's, he's kind of caught. He's like, I, I, what does he call it? Indirect assassination. Right. And so because I won't just let her die now. Now I'm stuck. He goes on to say to her though, that don't think that I hate her because she's mad. If you became mad, I would still love you. That this is something else. And then we get his, we get his backstory. He says, though, that he wish he had a fraction of Samson's strength, which is interesting because earlier they had talked about Sam.
- [29:01]
B
Yeah.
- [29:02]
A
Delilah.
- [29:02]
B
Yeah. Yeah. A man also much troubled in his relations with women.
- [29:07]
A
Exactly, exactly. So he keeps saying. No, look, I. You misunderstand me, Jane. We're gonna still be together. We're just gonna leave where no one knows us. No one's gonna know. And again, it's another opportunity where Jane is basically like, it doesn't matter what other people will say. It's what I'm gonna think about myself. And I don't think that this is, this is right. So Bertha's backstory is very interesting. And she's just obviously a walking embodiment of unrestrained passion. And he's been tricked into marrying her. And he, he admits that it was lust, which in the Victorian mindset, you don't marry, you don't have lust for your wife. Let's just put it that way. I know we have a lot of.
- [29:49]
B
Yeah.
- [29:49]
A
Little pictures have go into that to say, but this is this is not a. A modest wife is what you want, not a passionate wife. Passion is for mistresses. Wives are to be passionless. I'll just put it like that at all. Fellowsy. We can get into this more. So the Victorians would have been extremely. I don't know if I want to say scandalized. They would have seen the fact that Bertha gets married and acts this way is still unrestrained passion. And you can see too that it flows outside of the marriage. Right. So she's behaving in all manner of excessively. Yes, yes. Right. So we can imagine she's drinking, she's probably gambling. She appears to have other men. Other men. And. And he's like, what did I get myself into?
- [30:45]
B
Yeah. And then we're also meant to understand that this flows in the family. This is.
- [30:49]
A
This flows in the family. And the mother has been hidden away from him and so he's been. He's been tricked into this. And it's interesting that he wants to get a divorce, but she turns mad so fast he can't. So he can't. On a technicality, he can't get a divorce even though she has cheated on him. And he would have had grounds in Victorian England, actually.
- [31:10]
B
It's because she's mad. That's at least one impediment that.
- [31:13]
A
Yeah.
- [31:14]
B
He wouldn't have been able to get any kind of separation because she would not then have anyone to provide for her.
- [31:20]
A
Right.
- [31:20]
B
So he's bound to her.
- [31:21]
A
He's bound to her now. Oh, I mean, just all this language. A fiery West Indian night, sulfur steams, a ferment of tempest. All this. It's building up. It's building up. And he thinks to kill himself.
- [31:35]
B
Yes.
- [31:36]
A
Yeah.
- [31:37]
B
And you believe him. You. He is a character who could do that.
- [31:40]
A
Absolutely.
- [31:41]
B
And that's also something that. Byronic heroes often in Byron's. Some of his narrative poems, you know, contemplating suicide or self destructive, a very,
- [31:53]
A
I want to say, is a prominent theme in Romantic literature and. Yeah. Sorrows of young birther. Yeah, yeah. Being brought so low.
- [32:02]
B
Yeah.
- [32:03]
A
So then he comes up with the idea to hire Grace Pool and put her aside and I'm just going to go live my life. I'm like 26 years old at this point or 24 years old. And I'm. I refuse to believe my life is over. And off he goes. But then he describes his series of mistresses to her and again, she handles that pretty darn well. And the theme here, the repetition of the stories is I had a series of mistresses And I tired of them after a few weeks, which is exactly what Jane feared before the wedding, if you remember.
- [32:34]
B
Yeah, right.
- [32:35]
A
So this is. All of. This is like, all of her fears coming true that he's saying, oh, yeah, I just have a string of women and I tire of them and toss them aside, which has been her fear all along. Then he gives us the backstory of falling for her. And you can see from a realistic standpoint, his testing of her seems cruel and arbitrary. And I would definitely tell my daughters, these are red flags. Don't date this guy. But in the fairy tale world of this book, they're. They're fairy tale tests. You know, like what he's doing. I said this last time, but. And this is like, you know, putting down peas and lentils and saying separated, like it's always pointless the tasks to prove yourself. I thought this was really interesting when he said to Jane that one of the ways he was testing at her was snarl as I would. You showed me no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure. Well, that's straight up Beauty and the Beast, right? I was snarling like the monster that I am. And you didn't cower. And I thought, this is a woman who can actually love me. Right. Jane's fighting inside, and he says, you know, Jane, who in the world cares for you? Who's going to be injured by what you do? Like, who care? Who cares? Let's just go be with each other. And she replies, I care for myself. I've read a lot of Victorian novels since then. I can't think of anyone that says anything like this, much less a female character. I care for myself.
- [34:05]
B
Yeah, that was. That was a sharply, sharply framed speech.
- [34:08]
A
I thought it was. And then, okay, but first this. Okay, so he's making the case, look, let's just be together. It doesn't matter. While he spoke, my very conscience and reason turn traitors against me and charged me with crimes and resisting him. In other words, he is successfully appealing to her reason here that there is no reasonable reason your rational mind can understand. If this, then this, therefore this. And she's like, okay, actually, that's making. Making sense. They spoke almost as loud as feeling, and that clamored wildly. So she says, I care for myself. And then if you go down to the end of that, she says that her individual conscience has worth, and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane. Quite insane. So that is very interesting. To rebel against her own integrity would be to lose her sanity, which, of course, would. Would fit with birth. Amazing. Right. I'm not going to become insane. I'm not going to rebel against.
- [35:01]
B
Well, that's good.
- [35:02]
A
In my own sanity. She's saying, he seemed to devour me with his flaming glance. He's looking at me with the glow of a furnace, all this fire. And he says, a mere reed she feels in my hand. Okay. She runs away. She dreams. That night, I dreamt I lay in the red room at Gateshead. Okay. Because she is there. She is right back in the red room. This is what she's faced with. And remember that the Red Room was about a consuming passion. And you made the point earlier that many of the romantic novels really are trying to distinguish between two different kinds of passion, which is why I keep saying that it's more complicated than just reason versus another.
- [35:39]
B
Another novelist who does. Plays on that theme rather a lot is Walter Scott.
- [35:45]
A
Oh, he was a big fan of.
- [35:47]
B
Yeah, it's interesting, in several of his stories, you have a kind of. Kind of quietly drawn, almost kind of flat hero who is introduced to a set of more. Oh, that, you know, they might be more zealous or, you know, sort of firebrand Highlanders or something like that, and invited to throw in with them in some revolution or something like that. And often, often it will end with an acknowledgment of the attraction of that kind of zeal and that kind of fiery devotion to a cause, while also showing that, you know, zealotry often leads to destruction, to chaos and other other undesirable consequences.
- [36:40]
A
All right, since you brought up Sir Walter Scott, this would be. I'm just going to go ahead and say it now. So Sir Walter Scott, who Charlotte Bronte was a huge fan of, published a lot of collections of, like, Scottish kind of folktales, legends, mythology.
- [36:55]
B
And so he had balladry of the Scottish border. And.
- [36:58]
A
Yes, okay, so there's a Scottish ballad, I think, which is really important for this novel. And I'm going to give credit to the person who found it. It's one of our Patreon members, Robin Keller, shout out to you, decided to look up. Why on earth does he keep calling her Janet? Which I also didn't know. So she looked.
- [37:15]
B
That is strange.
- [37:15]
A
This is fantastic. Okay. She said, there's a Scottish ballad, Tam Lin. It's about a woman usually called Janet, who wanders upon the land of a known seducer, Tam Lin, from what I can tell, they're in a fairyland or close to a fairyland. There's lots of fairy imagery which reminded me of all Rochester's descriptions. Of Jane being fairy like or elf like. Tam was once a mortal man captured by a fairy queen. Get this. After falling off his horse. That's just how Rochester meets Dane. And she's going to soon throw him into hell. He asked Janet for help rescuing him. By rescuing him, he will require capturing him, even though he'll turn into many beasts. A very Beauty and the Beast crossover. He will eventually be turned into a burning coal, and she'll have to throw him into a well while he emerges as a man once again. Now, there's some more stuff here, but that would be spoilers for later.
- [38:09]
B
That was an amazing discovery.
- [38:10]
A
That's an amazing discovery.
- [38:11]
B
Honestly, that's the kind of thing that you could present a dissertation on totally
- [38:16]
A
the influence of Sir Walter Scott. Man, I know. I need to go back and add a whole chapter to my thesis.
- [38:20]
B
Oh, yeah. Walter Scott, by the way, is the. One of the formative influences on that entire generation of writers everybody read. I mean, everyone from Queen Victoria. I think he was one of her. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [38:32]
A
Charlotte Mason loves Sir Walter Scott. Yeah, yeah. Huge, huge, huge. Not as popular now as he once was.
- [38:37]
B
I know, which is really a shame. Really a shame.
- [38:39]
A
It is. But, you know, it's another example of how the female writers sort of dominate the period. More people know Charlotte Bronte than Sir Walter Scott, I would say. But the interesting thing. Okay, what's the application of what we just learned? Clearly, this is being set up that Rochester thinks Jane is going to save him and save him from Bertha. Save him from the. The hell that she has thrown me into. Right. Metaphorically. So while she's reading, the mother moon tells her, flee my daughter, flee temptation. She says, mother, I will. And she goes, that's another Sleeping Beauty waking up. Up and fleeing. All right, so then she takes off, and I think last time we talked about the tale of patient Griselda, but this. This little detail that she leaves the jewels, she leaves everything behind. That's also impatient Griselda she makes when he exiled her. So when he exiles her back at the end, she. She says, naked, I came out of my father's house, and naked I will return, so I'm gonna leave everything. And of course, that's a reference to Job. So what happens next is totally patient Griselda that Jane leaves everything behind. And then she. Of course, she accidentally leaves the rest of her stuff behind. And so she's. She's literally exiled.
- [39:50]
B
She has nowhere to go.
- [39:51]
A
Nowhere to go.
- [39:52]
B
This is all death references. Like, what is she going to say? Yeah, I Was the governess for a guy I got engaged to, but then found out he has another wife. So can I have a job? That's not, like, a great resume, Right?
- [40:04]
A
Right there, right. And not only is it a symbolic death, okay, so it's an exile once again, which is a type of death. But at one point, she. She thinks to herself, I'm just gonna lie here and die.
- [40:15]
B
Oh, yeah, she almost does.
- [40:16]
A
She almost does. Okay, but good old symbolism, right? On the third day, she arrives at Whit Cross. Here we are. The cross, the crux, the. The whole thing, right? And she doesn't know where to go. And she becomes a beggar. So this is absolutely the bottom of the U chapter.
- [40:33]
B
For.
- [40:34]
A
For. For Jane, if you're following the. You know, the.
- [40:36]
B
The.
- [40:37]
A
The U shape of the. The romance. She has descended. She has hit the bottom of the U. One of our students, Keegan Goodman. Shout out. Shout out to him. Made the point that if Jane had married Rochester at the Begin. At the. In chapter 26, then this would have been a tragedy, because that would have been the high part. And she had to go down. But the fact that it didn't work meant she descended. So he said, I'm going to guess that the rest of the book is going to be her ascent and a good job, Keegan. And of course, we see that in these chapters because she's lost a family, she's going to gain a family. If she's lost a fortune, she's going to gain a fortune. She's lost a home, she's going to gain a home. We see it all in these chapters that everything is restored to her. So interesting that earlier, when she's a child and the doctor talks to her and says, do you want to go with your poor relations? And she thinks to herself, I don't know what poverty is, but I know I don't want to be a beggar. And she thinks, I don't want to be a beggar with my poor relations. And then this is exactly what happens to her. She becomes a beggar with her poor relations, which becomes good. And she's an outcast again, this poor kid. She's. She's. She says right here that she's. She sees Rochester as impotent, as a bird with both wings broken. Okay, I think that's a Cupid and Psyche reference. And I want to talk about Cupid and Psyche a little bit, too. After last week's episode, I started thinking more about Cupid and Psyche when I teach it. And when I teach it, I Point out that the first half of Cupid and Psyche is Beauty and the Beast and the second half is Cinderella. Whereas instead of an evil stepmother, it's a. It's an evil mother in law, which might even be worse.
- [42:13]
B
More realistic maybe. Yeah.
- [42:15]
A
Who sends her on a series of trials. But the scene in chapter 25 when Bertha. So Jane wakes up in her bed and Bertha is standing over her with the candle and puts the candle in her face. That's Cupid and Psyche. That is the scene in Cupid and Psyche.
- [42:31]
B
That's the crux on which the rest of the.
- [42:32]
A
So Psyche stands over Q, sleeping Cupid in bed with the candle, and the wax drips on his face. And that's when he says, love flaps his wings and goes, because you didn't trust me. Right. But that's also the moment that's going to break this. Right. After which Psyche is exiled. She goes on a series of impossible tasks. She loses her home and she thinks she's going to die. So I started thinking about this, started thinking, well, what is the trial? And then of course, we get to this section here where Jane's like, I'm just gonna lie down and die. I was like, wait, that happens to Psyche. Psyche is faced with this impossible task and thinks, I can't do it. I'm just gonna lie down and die. And then I remembered what it was. I. I'm gonna look this up for next week, I promise. But I haven't been feeling well, so I didn't look it up all the way. But Mr. Classes says, correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't the impossible task that she freaks out about and wishes she was dead and wants to kill herself, that she has to retrieve a reed from the River Styx?
- [43:22]
B
I think it's. Yes, something like that. There's several tasks.
- [43:25]
A
There's definitely a reed and there's definitely a river. So what? Okay. Hello.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah.
- [43:30]
A
The two bookends of this book. We start with the reeds and we're ending with the rivers. And she's on the doorstep of the rivers thinking, I'm just gonna sit here and die. Right.
- [43:41]
B
It's kind of uncanny.
- [43:42]
A
Yeah. So I think she's definitely playing with Cupid and Psyche. I got very excited seeing what that was all about. And of course, you know, what happens to help Psyche is she gets a number of some magical helpers. Right. And that's what happens in this section too. And so I think if you get too caught up in the realism of it, what a coincidence. She just happens to knock on the door of people who turn out to be her long lost cousins. That's so stupid. Not in a fairy tale world, it's not. That's fairy tale logic. That the magical helper comes when you need the most. Also, if we understand this is a journey of the soul, this is the kind of stuff that happens. Right? So. All right, so we've got this double to the beginning. So Diana and Mary are the doubles of Georgiana and Eliza. John Reed becomes St. John Rivers. If you're listening to the audiobook and you're hearing Sinjin, Sinjin is how you pronounce St. John. So we have John and St. John. And so this is. This is the. This is the restored full vision of what the reeds were simply a shadow of, even with dying uncles. Right? So the river's dad has just died. The reed's dad has just died with the reeds. You have family who treat her as strangers. Here. You have strangers who treat her as family and then turn out to be a family. So it's. It, you know, it's the fullness of. Oh, thank you.
- [45:01]
B
Very nicely done.
- [45:01]
A
Thank you. So it's. It's the double, but it's one octave higher. It's the fullness, which is what the romance does. The romance, always at the end, repeats what happened at the beginning, but one octave higher. I had somebody ask me, why on earth do you pronounce it Sinjin? Okay. And the only answer I have is a French answer because I'm French where I'm from in French, Louisiana. Well, so we do this because. So there are last names. I don't know anybody with saint as a first name, but there are plenty of last names in Louisiana that are saint something. My aunt married a man whose last name is Saint Amal.
- [45:41]
B
Okay, okay.
- [45:42]
A
But you don't pronounce it like that. Okay. You pronounce it Santa Ma.
- [45:46]
B
Oh, wow.
- [45:48]
A
Right. So I think they just smush it together. And so St. John, Bakan, Sinjon. All right, but he's obviously St. John. Okay, right. The man's a saint. And so she's meeting him. And the sisters are reading German.
- [46:03]
B
They're reading Schiller. No, I. The Bronte sisters, Emily and Charlotte, part of their. Part of their tutelage while they were at the pensionet in Belgium. They took German lessons there from a tutor who knew that language. And she knew enough to read some of the German romantics in their own language. I. I don't think she was fluent the way she was fluent in French, but she did have some familiarity with the language.
- [46:28]
A
I think we don't understand the closeness between England and Germany in the 19th century.
- [46:33]
B
Yeah, it's World War I is what it was. It was kind of fashionable to think of England and Germany as cousin cultures that had, you know, more in common than they.
- [46:44]
A
And the artists went back and forth, back and forth.
- [46:47]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [46:47]
A
And so they. So it might seem strange that we'd say there's a huge influen German romanticism on England, but if you understand how much they're literally going back and forth.
- [46:56]
B
Sure.
- [46:57]
A
And if we weren't sure that this is her bottom of the year, her death, I mean, she's sitting there saying, this is it. She says, this is the climax. This is the throws of despair. I'm going to sit here and die. And that's when Sinjin says, can we help you? But if we weren't sure if she was death, they said, oh no, look how white she is. And they say, as white as death. Oh, she's bloodless. She's a specter. Right. So all the blood is out somehow. Now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant and disowned by the wide world. So this is it. She's going to find her home, her people, her family.
- [47:34]
B
By her own testimony, it seems like a perfect place for her.
- [47:38]
A
Yes.
- [47:38]
B
On, on a surface level at least. And not only is it a place where people are willing to provide her with hospitality, but they seem like her long lost, you know, kindred.
- [47:50]
A
Yeah. And who turned out to be just exactly. Exactly that. Now Jane takes on a new name. She's Jane Elliott, which of course, if you're, if you're following along with your identity quest bingo card, you can check that one off. But you know, she, she. Jane Eyre dies and Jane Elliot is. Is born here. I mean, there's all kind of little things where they tell her, don't sit too close to the fire. The fire is going to overwhelm you in this condition. I mean, you know, hello. But let's take a look at this description here of Sinjin. Would you read this little.
- [48:20]
B
Yes, certainly.
- [48:21]
A
We see Sinjin for The first time,
- [48:23]
B
Mr. St. John, sitting as still as one of the dusky pictures on the walls. Keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused and his lips mutely sealed was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young, perhaps some, perhaps 20. Eight to 30, tall, slender. His face riveted the eye. It was like a Greek face, very pure in outline. Quite a straight, classic nose, quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom indeed an English face comes so near the antique models as his did. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue with brown lashes. His high forehead, colorless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.
- [49:17]
A
Okay, we got a lot to say about St. John Rivers. The first thing I'm gonna do, though, is give a shout out to one of our students, Natalia Testic.
- [49:24]
B
Yeah, this is the episode where all the smart things are said by people who are not on the show.
- [49:27]
A
This is why it's okay for me to get sick from time to time, because people can do the heavy lifting.
- [49:32]
B
No, Natalia had a brilliant observation.
- [49:33]
A
She did, and I'm gonna share it with y'. All. Natalia. If you guys remember, we did the Literary Life of Natalia Testa. She is my mini me. And you know, what I failed to say on that podcast and still haunts me to this day is as fate would have it, we actually have the same birthday. That's how. Not the same year, I should point out. But. But yeah, she. She was. She was born on my birthday. I mean, talk about a stalker. Get your own birthday, Natalia. Anyway, anyway, anyway, she pointed out because she's taking my Romantics class right now, and I've been explaining about how the Romantics are pushing back against the neoclassical movement, which I realized in circles today, when I say neoclassical, they think I'm talking about the classical school down the street. No, the neoclassical period, also known as the Augustan Age. That's the Enlightenment period. It's before. Right before the Romantics. And so she said his being described as a Greek statue. Does this mean St. John is being associated with the neoclassical period?
- [50:28]
B
Yeah, he's a very. Yeah, Apollonian sort of character. He's very collected and very pure. And I think it's not too critical to say maybe sort of bloodless. Bloodless. Now, how about this? This is a weird illustration, but you know that movie, the African Queen? The old Hepburn. Yeah, do you remember Katharine Hepburn? The. The missionary in it at one point? She says it's a great line. Nature is what God has put us on this earth to overcome. I think St. John Rivers, he would say that. He would put that in his commonplace books. Like, very, very high minded. He's also, in his way, a very idealistic character. And, yeah, he seems kind of detached from most of the common affections that make ordinary humans human.
- [51:22]
A
So I think Natalia is completely right. I think there's a lot going on here with this description of him as the statue, as we're going to see in the next few chapters. But I think she is correct to associate him with neoclassicism, because neoclassicism had the cold eye of reason. Yeah, the cold smile of reason. That was another one. Just this kind of calm, no passion. The rational mind can solve everything. Right. What's the Keats?
- [51:49]
B
No enthusiasm.
- [51:50]
A
No enthusiasm, Right. It's the Keats line.
- [51:53]
B
Philosophy would clip an angel.
- [51:55]
A
Angel's wings. We're gonna solve all mysteries by rule and line. We're gonna unweave a rainbow. So I think he is absolutely associated with all of that. And so he is the opposite of Rochester. So Rochester is all fire. And Sinjin, if you guys are paying attention. Are you paying attention? Did you notice? What is he constantly compared to in these chapters? Ice. He's ice. He is Mr. Self controlled. And he's a statue. He's described as a statue here. And part of her frustration with him is, you're obviously in love with this girl. What's wrong with you? And he's like, no, must not, cannot. You know, must be a block of ice. So a lot of critics correctly point out that Sinjin is a double to John Reed. I mean, they have the same name. How can they not be so John Reed Singin Rivers. Right. John and St. John. Okay. And they're both cousins, and they're so. They're clearly like, one's bad and one's good. And a surprising number of critics think that St. John is the double of Brocklehurst, like the bad pastor and the good pastor. I don't buy that so much. You and I have talked about this. We don't buy that so much. But both of us are on the same page. And I could not find anybody to say this. And this will make more sense when we get to the end, I think. But I think. I think he's the double of Helen Burns.
- [53:10]
B
He seems. It seems like the same sort of conscience, the same kind of religious conscience animates both of them. And both of them are. Let me efface myself so much as to disappear almost completely.
- [53:25]
A
Jane calls him a Christian stoic.
- [53:27]
B
Yeah. And he even admits, and this is interesting, and he's. He's, I will say, impressively self aware in some respects. He says that, yeah, Christianity, for him, it is the creed that he Adopts. But he doesn't have any. He doesn't have any of the, I guess, warmer sort of compassion that you like to associate.
- [53:52]
A
It seems to be a religion primarily in his rational mind.
- [53:57]
B
Yeah. And he.
- [53:58]
A
And not that he's not active believer.
- [54:00]
B
Yeah, no, it's true. It's like that. It's not that he. It's not that it hasn't transformed his heart so much as he doesn't have a heart for it to transform.
- [54:10]
A
Oh, well said. Because he's a statue.
- [54:11]
B
Yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah. I'm. I'm tempted to compare him. Sorry. Which is the character in the wizard of Oz who doesn't have a heart.
- [54:20]
A
The tin.
- [54:20]
B
Yeah, maybe. No, that's. That's cheesy. I won't go there. But yes, there. There is something about him that. There is something about him that I think not just suggests, but screams that he doesn't have some of the ordinary human capacity for even healthy sentiment. That.
- [54:38]
A
Right.
- [54:39]
B
Someone like Jane Eyre would look for in a man.
- [54:41]
A
We get to the next set of chapters. We'll be able to explore this more. But we'll just set it up. We'll set it up now. And what we're seeing in these chapters, I mean, she says, okay, he seems of reserved and abstracted and even of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labors, blameless in his life and habits. He yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content which would should be the reward of every sincere Christian right.
- [55:07]
B
Yes. She says that he had not found the peace of God that passes. There's something that. A kind of spiritual restlessness.
- [55:13]
A
Well, it's a spiritual striving almost. Right.
- [55:16]
B
You get the sense that he feels. And I think Helen Burns also would feel that he can never quite live up to his own principles, which are of a very abstemious and austere kind of. Even his sermons, she says, are pregnant with a kind of, you know, a kind of uncompromising Calvinism that, you know, whose. Whose moral canons would be too high even for him to live up to.
- [55:39]
A
And we'll look at his speech in a few chapters here about his ambition. But. But before we get to that, though, in this chapter, in chapter 31. Well, yes, I also want to have a note for chapter 30. I don't want to forget, but let's follow the Helen train of thought. Jane is talking to his sisters, and one of them says, St. John looks quiet. Jane. But he adds, if he hides a fever in his vitals. And I Wrote in the margin. This is Helen, right?
- [56:05]
B
Exactly.
- [56:05]
A
I mean, Helen has consumption. She literally has a fever in her vitals. Right. The, that's burning her up from the inside.
- [56:09]
B
And a note of that line as well.
- [56:10]
A
Oh, high five. Nice. Okay. Yeah. So I, I think he's clearly the double of, of Helen. So the note I made about chapter 30 was Jane. Okay, again, this is another Cupid and Psyche image. Jane refers to Rochester as her lost Elysium.
- [56:26]
B
Oh, that's good.
- [56:27]
A
Right. That's Cupid and Psyche. So Psyche loses Elysium with Cupid because of her own curiosity. And then Sinjin says to Jane that she, she is an impassioned person, but he means it in a good way, which is interesting. Okay, and then of course, in like, chapter, is it 32 or 33? We'll get to it in a second where she, she says, I'm fire in your ice.
- [56:51]
B
You know, it's, it strikes me that Sinjon in Rochester, who could not be more unlike as men, are drawn to Jane. I think for some of the same reasons. I think they both appreciate her frankness and her moral candor. Is that a fair observation, would you say?
- [57:12]
A
Why don't we hold on to the Rochester St. John stuff until we get to the next set of chapters? Right. Now, in these chapters, he's her brother and her patron and is sacrificing his affection and attraction to this Rosamund woman
- [57:28]
B
because
- [57:31]
A
she won't, who seems like to
- [57:32]
B
have everything to attract a man.
- [57:34]
A
Right, yes, yes.
- [57:35]
B
Yeah.
- [57:35]
A
And Jane feels frustrated with him. So chapter 31, Jane has a home. He finds her a job as a teacher, he gets her a little cottage. All of that is very interesting in the context of Victorian literature, because most of the other writers dealing with the fallen woman theme would have Jane come to a very different end after she was cast off by holding.
- [58:01]
B
That is likely true.
- [58:02]
A
Right, so because this is a fairy tale, she stumbles on her family, her guardian angels here. Of course, she's going to end up becoming a fairy godmother to them in chapter 33 when she splits the money with them. But they're kind, I mean, they're kind of her guardian angels here, her fairy godmothers, and they give her a job. And you know the way that Hannah acts the, the maid, when she's like, get out of here. Like, no, no, no respectable young lady would be begging like that if, what am I trying to say? If Thomas Hardy wrote this.
- [58:31]
B
I know, I, I, I shudder to think what would have happened to her right now. Yeah.
- [58:35]
A
Tardy wrote this through no fault of her own and through the, you know, the machinations of this evil man. She's passed that on the world.
- [58:41]
B
Legitimate children by now and death somewhere.
- [58:44]
A
And it would be the tragedy of Jane Eyre. Right? That is how most of these stories win in real life. But this is a. This is a different story. So she's got her home and she's happy. And then she has this speech, which you can read this paragraph for me right here. Start to meantime, because I want you guys to listen to the Sleeping Beauty imagery here.
- [59:02]
B
Meantime, let me ask myself one question. Which is better? To have surrendered to temptation, listened to passion, made no painful effort, no struggle, but to have sunk down in the silken snare, fallen asleep on the flowers covering it, wakened in a southern clime amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa, to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress, delirious with his love. Half my time. For he would. Oh, yes, he would have loved me. Well, for a while he did love me. No one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth and grace. For never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me. It is what no man besides will ever be. But where am I wandering and what am I saying? And above all, feeling, Whether it is better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles, fevered with delusive bliss one hour, suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next, or to be a village schoolmistress, free and honest in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England.
- [60:11]
A
All right, There you go. So she doesn't want to be falling asleep on the flowers covering the silken snare. Right. That's Sleeping Beauty. I'm gonna wake up. I don't want this. Also, just a lot of. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?
- [60:31]
B
Yeah. I mean, she doesn't care about the gilding because she's aware of the cage. She would. She would be in. In that circumstance. Understands?
- [60:37]
A
Right. And you know another parallel between Singin and Rochester? You know, so Jane fears that Rochester is going to love her for a bit and then cast her off. That's what Sinjin says about Rosamund.
- [60:47]
B
12.
- [60:48]
A
12 months of list followed by a lifetime of regret.
- [60:50]
B
No, that's. That's. That's very keen.
- [60:54]
A
Thank you. That's my party trick. I can find.
- [60:56]
B
You're on Fire. You're on fire.
- [60:58]
A
All right, then we get this passage where he talks about his ambition to her. Okay? So he's this block of ice. And his sisters say, don't let that fool you. He actually has a fiery dart in his breast. He starts talking about his ambition here and. Well, I'll wait till the end. We can talk about how some original readers viewed Sinjin, but I just want to punch him in the face because I know ambition is a sin, not a virtue. And he's telling her, I have all this ambition and only through the gospel can I achieve it.
- [61:29]
B
A year ago, I was myself intensely miserable because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry. Its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world, for the more exciting toils of a literary career, for the destiny of an artist, author, orator, anything rather than that of a priest. Yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown. A lustre after power beat against my curate's surplice. I considered my life was so wretched it must be changed or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell. My cramped existence all at once spread out to a plane without bounds. My powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings and mount beyond Ken. God had an errand for me to bear witch afar to deliver it. Well, skill and courage. Excuse me. Skill and strength, courage and eloquence. The best qualifications of soldiers, statesman and orator were all needed for these all center in the good. Missionary.
- [62:36]
A
Yeah. You know, later he says all this fiery passion he has for ambition is being burnt up, given to God as a burnt offering.
- [62:44]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [62:47]
A
So there's. He's ice, but he really. He's fire. That's kind of. Of trying to put the fire out with ice.
- [62:55]
B
He's trying to refine the natural elements within him in a almost kind of a superhuman way.
- [63:02]
A
Yes. And this kind of. It is so hard for me to articulate this because it's just a sense, and it's a sense we share, which tells me I'm not crazy. But St. John is not bad. Okay? You're not supposed to think he's bad. He's not a bad man. He's a good man.
- [63:16]
B
No, I think. I think she presents some admirably, with
- [63:19]
A
some qualifications, but he's not an ideal man. Right? He. He. It's almost like he's just gonna force his way up the Divine ladder through the force of his will. Like. Like, really, I want to be this other person, but I know I can't. And so I think this is the one avenue I'm allowed to be. So I'm going to try to pour more my. All my ambitions into being a missionary. Yeah.
- [63:47]
B
I think there's something in him that is. Well, here's an illustration. I knew someone once who said that he had a very dramatic conversion when young. And he said that he wanted instantly to be a martyr. And he didn't realize until later on that wanting, actively wanting to be a martyr, to die for one's faith is maybe not a healthy aspiration.
- [64:18]
A
There you go.
- [64:19]
B
I think that St. John has something of that about him.
- [64:23]
A
Yes.
- [64:24]
B
Yeah.
- [64:24]
A
Because he's ice in one sense, but in another sense, he's restless fire.
- [64:30]
B
Yeah. Yeah, you could say that.
- [64:33]
A
Like this scene where he sees that she's drawn a. A picture. Rosamund.
- [64:39]
B
Yeah.
- [64:39]
A
Okay. And she's like, don't you want to look at it? And he's like, no. And she says, you take your self control too far. Right. Okay. So there's passion that can go too far, but there's self control that can go too far as well. And. And Charlotte Bronte is showing us both of those things. I mean, that scene, I almost had to laugh, where he's like, okay, for 15 minutes, you can tell me how much she loves me. And he actually takes out a watch.
- [65:06]
B
Yeah, right.
- [65:06]
A
He puts the timer. Go. And then when it's over, he's like, okay, that's enough. And she's like, but it doesn't have to end here. You can marry her. She loves you, you love her. This. Her father approves. Like there's nothing standing in the way here.
- [65:18]
B
It's as if he. When considering, you know, whether to act on some kind of inclination or not, he asks himself, will I enjoy this? Will this be a pleasure to me? And if the answer is yes, then he doesn't do it because it's another pleasure to be. Be, you know, offered up as a holocaust.
- [65:34]
A
Exactly. Exactly. So she pushes back, because for Jane, being loved is the most important thing in the world. Well, okay, not more important than her integrity, but she values it highly.
- [65:47]
B
It's in the high order of her concern.
- [65:49]
A
And the fact that he has it. And there is no moral impediment, there's no scruple of any kind to stop it.
- [65:55]
B
Yeah.
- [65:55]
A
That you could marry her and says, no, that's unthinkable to her.
- [65:59]
B
And she says, there's Something mutually uncomprehending in their relationship, even though they do admire each other's good qualities.
- [66:07]
A
Yes.
- [66:07]
B
Yeah.
- [66:07]
A
He had not imagined that a woman would dare speak so to a man. And he. He says, you have taken my confidence by storm, and now it is much at your service. I am simply in my original state, stripped of that blood bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity. A cold, hard, ambitious man. That is how he describes himself. Cold, hard, ambitious. That's exactly what I want my pastor to describe himself as.
- [66:32]
B
Yeah, that would be maybe a bit alarming.
- [66:37]
A
He goes on to say, natural affection only of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason and not feeling is my guide. My ambition is unlimited. My desire to rise higher, to do more than others, is insatiable. Okay, so saying reason is my guide. I do think that Natalia is right. I think that's. He's. He's Mr. Neoclassical. Reason is my guide, by which he means my rational mind. And part of what is going on is that the Enlightenment does not think that the imagination are your. Your emotions are a faculty of truth perception. They think just the rational mind. And the Romantics push back on that and say, actually, no, the imagination is actually a better way to perceive truth in the rational mind. It's a higher way. And so you have. You have a bit of that going on here. And he's just saying, no, this is my. This is my very rational plan.
- [67:35]
B
He seems as though he wants to transform himself into just like a gigantic disembodied brain in a clerical color.
- [67:40]
A
Yes.
- [67:41]
B
Which is a weird image. I know, but that's, but that is.
- [67:44]
A
I mean, that's. That's what Jonathan Swift's gonna do. That kind of image. You know, a big head to show that somebody's all. All reason. We'll. We'll see whether or not that that hurts him at all. And then in 33 is when we find out that she's the long lost heir. So we've had several puns on her name so far. Rochester makes the pun of err. Okay, you're gonna air. You're gonna make an error. And here we get the H E I r pun. We also find out though, that his name is St. John Air.
- [68:23]
B
Correct.
- [68:24]
A
And so that's very interesting. St. John Air. John Air. Jane Eyre. That is the male and female version of the same name. So we'll have to see what happens with that.
- [68:34]
B
All right. Can I say this is something strange? I. I found. I enjoyed this section of the book at least as much As I did as the Thornfield chapters, which I didn't. Even though I didn't remember it as well from my previous. From my first reading. Yeah, I think probably most people don't
- [68:53]
A
felt very convicted by what Adrienne Rich said about. Most people think the thorn fills the whole book. Because I was surprised. I was like, wait a minute, we're only on this chapter, and she's leaving
- [69:03]
B
slightly more than halfway through.
- [69:04]
A
So. But if you understand that the whole book is on her journey. Her journey. Then it makes sense. Right? You know, she's got these different kinds of moments, landscapes, if you will. In chapter 33, though, I mean, obviously she gets the fairy tale ending. As we've already said, she's got a fortune. She's got a home, she's got a name, she's got a family. She's got everything she's ever wanted in the story here. Yeah. Why not in the story here? And yet. And yet she doesn't. And actually, chapter. Chapter 33 ends with her and Sinjin getting into an argument because she wants to split the money. And he says no. And Jane says that she is fire and she's gonna melt his ice. Okay, so that's how we know that this is not a story that she. Oh, she realized with Rochester that passion is bad. And now she's gonna go be ice. No, she's with the guy who's ice. And she says, no, I'm firing. I'm gonna melt your ice. Nice. And in that sense, in that context, the fire is good. Right? She's not rejecting or denouncing her fire, but she's learning how to properly order it and not be consumed by it. So her. Her fire here, her feeling her, she wants to bless these people. And he tells her, you don't even know what it means. And she said, it doesn't matter. What I want most is family, and this would allow me to have it. So. Yeah. Why doesn't the book end here? Why do we have a whole new set of chapters we're just gonna have to see?
- [70:24]
B
All right.
- [70:24]
A
But the journey to home, of course, is a big part of the journey of the soul. And she's gotten a home. But we shall see what happens. All right, well, I'm sorry that this episode was a little shorter, but thank you guys for giving me grace for not feeling well, and you guys are doing an amazing job. So join us here next week when we finish the novel, and I'll have much to say about many things.
- [70:46]
B
No, I don't believe you.
- [70:49]
A
I like how Adrian Rich says about the ending and we're supposed to think this is a happy ending? What are we supposed to make of this? This. What are we supposed to make of it? We shall see. We shall see. All right, go to HouseOfHumaneLetters.com go to CassiodRussPress.com go to Patreon.com backslash literary life and join the crazy party that is our Discord server and we will see you right back here next time. Stick around to the end. Mr. Banks has a poem for you. And until next time, I hope I feel better. And also 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 at morningtime. 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.
- [72:17]
B
Easter Wings by George Herbert Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store, Though foolishly he lost the same decaying more and more, Till he became most poor with thee, O let me rise as larks harmoniously, and sing this day thy victories Then shall the fall further the flight in me My tender age in sorrow did begin, and still with sicknesses and shame Thou didst so punish sin, that I became most thin with thee let me combine and feel thy victory. For if I imp my wing on thine affliction shall advance the flight in me.