Jane Eyre XXIX -- chapter 28: LOST IN THE MOOR-LANDS

"The Raven Tree," by Chris Lord

1. Since the last Jane Eyre post, I am more convinced than ever that Jane is a bird.  Here, in the second paragraph of chapter 28, Jane stands at a crossroads examining her options.  She doesn't know where these paths may lead despite the signs' indications, because she doesn't know what may await her at any of the potential ends.  She is very much like the birds from Bewick's in chapter one: destitute, alone, and sedentary--at least temporarily--in points dark and dreary.
2. "We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence."  Always?
3. "Long after the little birds had left their nests...."; "I was a human being and had a human being's wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them."
4. In addition to her now past life, Jane has left all her fiscal earnings behind.  Considering the manner of her departure, would she have accepted her salary had it  been proffered?
5. Interesting what one can become habituated to: compare (if you've read the latter) Jane, here in destitution, with the paisanos of Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat.
6. "Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester, is still living: and then, to die of want and cold, is a fate to which nature can not submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid—direct me!"  What does she mean by this?
7. ignis fatuus: I believe this is, by Potter lore, a "hinkypunk," which is a will-o'-the-wisp by the rest of English folklore.  (If you haven't read The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Doyle, this would be a perfect time.  Imagine you're lost like Jane somewhere within this moor-land as described so much more effectively by Doyle.  What might a will-o'-the-wisp or hinkpunk do to your paired hope and despair?)

Jane Eyre XX -- chapter 20: A PEEK AT THE SKELETON

1. Jane is scared to death of Grace Poole.  Why has not made a bigger stink?  Is she so in control of her actions that she has set her concerns--even those most dire--by the wayside for the sake of or by trust in her boss?
2. The situation in the room next door to Mrs. Poole on one side and the howling, groaning canine thing on the other and with the injured man, locked in, the paintings, and the dying candle is a perfect storm for phantoms.  How does Jane hold up?
3. Crime versus Error; Sin versus Transgression
4. "Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant man justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him forever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger; thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?"
5. What does Mr.R mean by "instrument," and what does he intend when he says he believes to have found the instrument for his cure?
6. Poor Jane!  Cane anything but heartache come?

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."