Jane Eyre XXII -- chapter 22: EMOTIONAL MASONRY

1. "You are not without sense, Cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and, so it suits you, I don't much care."  Immurement is an ugly thing.  I imagine this reference to masonry isn't exactly how Jane or Bronte intended it, but I think it's indeed rather fitting.
2. Interesting that the death of Mrs. Reed and the dispersion of the Reed family happen roughly the same time as the death of Jane's relationship--or hopes for one--with Mr. Rochester.

So.  Chapter 22: a surprisingly--or uncharacteristically--short chapter!  It leaves me thinking about the idea of immurement.  (If you haven't clicked the link, do so and read up, unless you already know all about it.)  Forget for a minute the capital-punishment element, and even the literal walling-up element (especially since wikipedia has listed all the stuff--the literary and folkloric references to this particular and very romantic act and mode of death--I would be talking about otherwise); is there a connection within the confines of our book here between a potentially figurative immurement and our modern notion of putting up and tearing down walls--emotional walls?

"Count Ugolino and His Sons in Prison," by William Blake

Jane Eyre XXI -- chapter 21: DEATH AND SECRETS

1. The words "presentiments, signs, and sympathies" roll off the tongue so well, but do such things exist in the world of Jane Eyre?
2. Our present and o-so-popular interpretation of the Indian concept of "karma" is not exactly accurate to those who actually practice its source religion.  However, and regardless of the details, is karma--in any of its iterations--what brought about poor Mr. John's untimely death?
3. (It seems that in nearly all books I've read for which I've written up reading guides or study questions (nigh unto twenty five, I should say, since I began teaching), all have an extended portion, roughly in the middle, leading into which pertinent questions come shorter and shorter in number and often remain so until nearly the end of the book, where things generally pick up a bit, philosophically speaking.  We seem to be there in the discussionary doldrums now, as I go pages and pages with virtually nothing profound to ask.)
4. Quite a relationship there is between the two sisters, and so different than anything Jane ever saw when she was a resident at Gateshead or might have predicted during her time away.  

*

Jane Eyre V -- chapter 5: FIRST DAY OF INSTITUTION

Chapter five brings us out of the first scene of Jane's youth.  The chapter is fairly simply a transition--the drawing and raising of the curtains, of shifting of the lights.  Reset the stage for school and move one.  So, for a moment, disregard all the investigative and interpretative questions and, while the stage crew arranges, answer this only:

What do you think so far?

(The questions below are optional--except #2.  Answer #2.  Please.)


Reading Questions

1. Why is Mrs. Reed at all concerned with how Jane may speak of her and Gateshead while at Lowood?
2. Now that Jane is away from Gateshead, how do you think her behavior will change or how others think of her?
3. What lesson is Jane to learn from the girl with the book?
4. What do we know about Jane, combined with what we know about storytelling in general, that might help us make some predictions for her future?
5. What of the other orphans?

Jane Eyre IV -- chapter 4: WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF?

Gustave Dore

1. Mr. Brocklehurst is so described: "What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!" and I expect that a comparison to the Wolf of Red Riding Hood might not be far from accurate.  I wonder who the woodcutter might turn out to be.  (If you haven't yet taken the time to study fairy tales, it's never too late: get started here with the various versions of Little Red Riding Hood.)
2. Brilliant sarcasm: “What must you do to avoid [Hell]?”  //  I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health and not die.”  Of course, this likely speaks of some internalized self-doubt of Jane. 
3. Benefactress: literally a woman do-gooder.
4. On the subject of the dangers of the adult world--so similar to Alice of Wonderland in this regard, though overall her predicament is a lot more like that of James of the Giant Peach fame, the Baudelaires, Harry Potter, or, most obviously, Cinderella, as well as so many other cautionary fairy tales, like Little Red Riding Hood--and learning to negotiate them: the little boy who loves Psalms, does he really love the verses, or is he seeking to please and survive?
5. Of the scripture Jane prefers, what is it that interests her, and what's wrong with Psalms?
6. Initially, Jane appears terrified at the prospect of leaving with Mr. Brocklehurst.  Why doesn't Jane, even this early, happily jump at the opportunity to leave?  Isn't the grass always greener over somewhere else, no matter where that elsewhere is?
7. Why, after Jane's great catharsis, does Mrs. Reed suddenly become so mellow and genial?
8. Jane's emotions are a roller coaster: "First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses."
9. How sweet is revenge?
10. What is the best way to get rid of a bully, and how does that apply here?  (Any good anti-bullying stories out there?)
11. “If you dread them, they'll dislike you.”

Jane Eyre III -- chapter 3: MORE REAL THAN REAL

Reading Questions

1. Bessie gains dimension!  How shallow can she be if she sympathizes with Jane now that Jane's so pathetic, and yet amidst the sympathy she defends the honor of the family by lying to Mr. Lloyd as he questions Jane later in the chapter.  What might this say of Bessie's true nature?  Consider also Bessie's song, whose words are so pointedly directed at Jane, the orphan.
2. "Vain favor! coming, like most other favors long deferred and often wished for, too late!"
3. Jane says herself, in this same paragraph that also includes elves and Lilliputians (whose book, Gulliver's Travels, she considers "a narrative of facts"), that her imagination is just as alive and real for as is reality for the less fanciful, which tends toward a sore of hyper-reality, more real than real, and emphasizes the phantasmagoria of chapter II, for which she's still suffering; yet here, at the end of this very paragraph, the fantastical escape she seeks from Swift has lost its charm.  Why?  Has it also lost its perceived reality?  A partial answer might be found in a connection between Gulliver and tart, but there's more here than what this connection is limited to.
4. Further question along these same lines: How is it that fantasy can indeed be more real than reality, and why do we so crave it?  Please use examples.
5. Is the apothecary, Mr. Lloyd, playing devil's advocate through the questioning (example: "“Ghost! What, you are a baby, after all! You are afraid of ghosts?"), and if so, what are his motives?
6. Whom does poverty strike harder, children or adults (a deliberately obtuse question)?  I see Jane's preference of caste over liberty as surprisingly mature.  It is idealism that tends most frequently to claim the contrary.  Defend or refute.
7. Guy Fawkes
8. Abbott: "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really can not care for such a little toad as that."  (I love the "verbed" form of compassion, whose spelling is exactly the same as the adjectival!)  In extra minutes of the science classes I'm currently teaching, we've been watching bits and pieces of the Discovery series Planet Earth.  It's fun to listen to and watch the students who cheer and gasp at the surprises, triumphs, and brutalities of nature.  There are as many grunts of disgust as anything else.  And it makes sense.  A lot of nature is gross--at least if you take our modern culture's little pettinesses and preciousnesses and fastidiousnesses (*so many Ss!*) and drape them over the animals and pretend they should fit.  Anthropomorphism at its worst and most ignorant!  Abbott here reminds me of my 7th and 8th graders, basing and justifying her entire opinion of Jane on appearance, hearsay, and opinion and looking nothing at the inner clockworks.  Where's the informed objectivity?  Further it reminds me of the mirror in the Pondicherry Zoo from Life of Pi, whose sign invites patrons to examine a picture of the zoo's most dangerous animal.  The saddest thing is the truth of her statement, speaking generally of humanity.  Why do we prefer pretty?  Interesting, though: isn't her deliberately blind assumption that her ignorance is truth kind of the evil twin of Jane's preference for fantasy over reality?

Jane Eyre II -- chapter 2: DOWN THE CHIMNEY

Reading Questions

by Mary Shepard

1. (When I read the words of Miss Abbot and Bessie, I can't help but hear in my mind the voices of the cook and servant in the Banks' house from Mary Poppins.)
2. It's hard to gain an accurate perspective of a character--or any character--with a first-person narrative, because we can only see through her eyes.  How can we learn the truth?  What other books do you know where similar issues arise, yet you as the reader are able to glean the true nature of characters and situations?
3. Jane is 10 and clearly prejudiced against her family, perhaps as much as the family is prejudiced against her.  But Jane is also very intelligent.  What could she do to get along better?  More importantly, why doesn't she?  (Consider the type of novel this is, which, really, shows more of the author than of Jane.)
4. This early in the novel, the potential for conflict, complications, and character development are wide open.  The Gothicism of the novel permits a level of the supernatural.  This "red room" reminds me of a certain, more famous wardrobe--or perhaps a looking glass.  As you read this chapter, what is there of the supernatural, and how might you justify its reality, rather than just dismiss it as tricks of the imagination?
5. "...for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away." A chimney is an interesting thing, and quite a source for superstition--everything from Mary Poppins and Santa Claus to witches and chimney sweeps traverse these passageways.  Most commonly, and before the advent of stoves and ovens, the hearth was the center of the home, much like the idealism that says a kitchen is that center today.  Good things--though wrought from superstition--came down them (indeed, this is where the Jolly Old Elf has his true beginnings).  But on the hand, there's a dark mystery to them, as much a portal as any wardrobe or mirror, and usually it's the bad stuff that goes out them, like, from the most basic, smoke.  Chimney sweeps, far from the lucky shtick of Mary Poppins were the most unlucky kids around (see complimentary poems by William Blake below), and they went up chimneys.  Witches did not escape through doors to perform their mischief, but through the chimney on their brooms.  I've looked all over the place, and I can't find another example of something bad coming down the chimney, like what Miss Abbot suggests might come after Jane.  I highly doubt this is deliberate juxtaposition (except maybe there's a superstition of something coming down the chimney that I haven't found yet), but what if that reversal were intentional and that something bad--contrary to all tradition--did come into the house or Jane's presence via the chimney?  I've got some ideas, but none particularly well-formed.  Thoughts?
6. "Unjust!--unjust!" cries Jane, and then says that REASON brought about her complaint.  What is the difference between reason and romance, and--pick one--how is she right or wrong in ascribing the value of her predicament to the former?
7. A case for stepmothers: Why might it take an unnatural ("unnatural" like in the evolutionary context) empathy to truly care for a foster child "as one's own"?

***

The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Innocence

William Blake
When my mother died I was very young,

And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,

That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,

"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,

You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet; and that very night,

As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, - 

That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,

Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel who had a bright key,

And he opened the coffins and set them all free;

Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,

And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,

They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;

And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,

He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,

And got with our bags and our brushes to work.

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;

So if all do their duty they need not fear harm. 

*

The Chimney Sweeper, from Songs of Experience

William Blake
A little black thing in the snow,
Crying "weep! weep!" in notes of woe!
"Where are thy father and mother? Say!"--

"They are both gone up to the church to pray.

"Because I was happy upon the heath,

And smiled among the winter's snow,

They clothed me in the clothes of death,

And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

"And because I am happy and dance and sing,

They think they have done me no injury,

And are gone to praise God and his priest and king,

Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Jane Eyre I -- chapter 1: MELANCHOLY ISLES

Period Vocabulary

1. caviler: one who cavils--one who nitpicks, splits hairs, or argues
2. letter-press: a quality of printing, resulting in sort of the opposite of embossing; a quality of high-end, old publishing
3. bilious: since Bronte's not likely talking about the issue of bile from liver problems, she's more likely using "bilious" to indicate John's bad attitude and temper

Reading Questions and Notes

1. The weather as indicator of mood, tone, motif, etcetera is typical of Gothicism, of which Jane Eyre is a defining text.  The weather is, of course, generally considered--and especially out of Victorian England--as act of God.  What does Bronte indicate by aligning Jane with the weather and the surrounding family with this weather's opposite?  "Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day."
2. While I'm less interested in issues of Transcendentalism, at least at this point (the prefatory "notes" of my edition say it's at issue here), there are already indications of Romanticism: emphasis, even reliance, on human emotion rather than reason; the power and influence of nature and even the supernatural; advocacy of free thought.  What does Jane and the text demonstrate of Romanticism this early?
3. The passage from Bewick's is indicative of Jane, certainly already but likely increasingly so as we continue through her history.  How?
4. What is the "solitary church-yard"?  Where did it come from?  And the gallows?
5. Is John Reed not Dudley Dursley, from Harry Potter, or Mo, from Calvin and Hobbes?  Why is this the stereotype for bullies?
6. There's another issue of weather, taking the dreariness from another perspective: The elements of a storm surely don't dislike their nature and likely find pleasure in the tormenting of the landscape.  If Jane is the island, what is the storm?
7. Are all entirely against Jane?  I doubt the complicity of Eliza and Georgiana.  

by Bill Waterson