Jane Eyre XXIV -- chapter 24: A PLANE JANE

1. Such is the tone of this book that I am quite frequently reminded of EA Poe.  "I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket" I must say reminds me of Poe "Hop-Frog," though here, likely, is the least similar comparison between the two authors.  More, again, I think the recollection calls stronger attention to the issue of tone than any issue of conflict.
2. It seems that perhaps this, well, tirade of Mr.R's at the head of the chapter brings to the surface a distinct, and perhaps jarring, difference between the two lovers.  What is it?
3. Mr.R asks, "What do you anticipate of me?" and Jane's reply is bleak!  If she's right, what is her evidence, more than that of storybooks; if she is wrong, why is she perhaps naturally prone to such a misjudgment?
4. Mr.R pleads his case and Jane asks, "Had you ever experience of such a character, sir?  Did you ever love such an one?"  //  Mr.R: “I love it now.”  //  Jane: “But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard?” Is this not a question impossible to answer?  Why or why not?  Is she justified in asking it?
5. What do Hercules and Samson have to do with any of this?
6. What is the real argument going on here?  Why does Jane not want the jewels, and why is Mr.R so bent on receiving them to her?
7. And here it is!  Soon after reference to a biblical king comes, "but for God's sake, don't desire a useless burden! Don't long for poison—don't turn out a downright Eve on my hands!"  Is she an Eve?  (Okay, I know that this is actually a pretty huge question.  Simplify.)
8. This, I think, is my new favorite line: "My principles were never trained, Jane; they may have grown a little awry for want of attention."
9. It is a hard thing for those of this current American culture to understand (and very little do I) the weight carried by "station" in Jane-Eyre period England.  What is Jane's station compared to Mr.R's, and what are the consequences both--NOT JUST MR. ROCHESTER--are accepting by marrying?
10. Is there yet disbelief within Jane that the marriage will happen?
11. All that glitters is not gold: HERE.
12. Of course, if Jane becomes a Rochester and inherits permanent residence at Thornfield, is she not bound to discover the mystery of the third floor, Mrs. Poole, and Mr. Mason?
13. brat and bairn
14. And as this chapter has produced my favorite line, so has it lent my favorite scene: the discussion of the moon and faeries between Mr.R and Adele.  Fantastic!
15. "I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol."

Jane Eyre XXIII -- chapter 23: LIGHTNING AND FIRE

1. Bronte misquotes Thomas Campbell's poem, "The Turkish Lady."  Check line 5: HERE.
2. The first page or two of chapter 23 can be described easily as Romantic--and not "romantic," as in the 'til-now stymied romance between Jane and Mr.R, but Romantic, as in the written gushing effulgence of emotion and unquenched idealism.
3. So, first Romanticism and now Mr.R is pointing out this amazing moth, alien denizen of the night!, and I'm reminded of the albatross from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  (If you're going to bother with this question, don't read Coleridge's second master piece passively; this is a BIG and IMPORTANT work.)  I haven't read ahead and don't know if this moth turns out indeed to be a portent one way or another, but the at-least-partially-aligned imagery and tone are both here.  Notice also the mention of the sea foam and imminent voyage to Ireland.  
4. When Jane complains about her necessary--and necessary by statement from Rochester--departure from Thornfield, what is she really complaining of?
5. Is Jane a woman like Lot's wife?  Will she look back?  And what if she does not depart?  What might this indicate of Thornfield, if this is indeed an apt comparison?
6. What's with the sudden usage of "Janet"?
7. "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you—you'd forget me."  Is Bronte referring to the taken rib from Adam to make Eve?  Is she referring, strangely, to the umbilical cord?  What is going on in this absolutely fascinating quotation?
8. More poetry!  Considering the period of the book's composition together with the heavy Romanticism of the book and this particular chapter respectively, check out Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" HERE, a truly masterful and hugely influential poem (at least as much so as "Mariner" above).
9. I do love to see the fire of Jane's childhood reemerge here in conversation with Mr.R, but culminating in a kiss!?  What is the man trying to do to our poor girl?
10. Name the many reasons Jane has to doubt Mr.R's sincerity of proposal.
11. What of the change of weather and general tone shift at the point of Jane's acceptance?  Remember the weather at the beginning of the book when we spoke of Gothicism, especially as it conflicts with Romanticism.  There is a strikingly similar moment in The Sound of Music (today, apparently, is the day of comparative literature).
12. What of the lightning-struck tree, so like a tower?  If this is indeed reference to Tarot, what of the shift from Tower to Tree?

A BEAUTIFUL QUOTATION FROM HULME

Taken from letter Hulme wrote while on the battlefront (emphasis added):

The only thing that makes you feel nervous is when the shells go off & you stand out revealed quite clearly as in daylight.  You have then the most wonderful feeling as if you were suddenly naked in the street and didn't like it. [...]  It's really like a kind of nightmare, in which you are in the middle of an enormous saucer of mud with explosions & shots going off all round the edge, a sort of fringe of palm trees made of fireworks all round it.

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I believe I've said this before, but I'm reminded uncannily of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front every time I read anything Hulme wrote regarding the war.  The book is a beautiful and poetic examination of WWI through a German soldier's eyes.  His narration offers the same fireworks that Hulme mentions above.

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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

Sunday Poetry XI -- TIGERS: GRR

SIRENS, TIGERS, and DREAMS, OH MY! and monsters too.

thank you: Chelsea Art Museum

Yeah, yeah.  I know.  Corny.  Hackneyed.  Irresistible.  But if you disregard the first of the trio, then it's likely smackingly obvious where this post is going, and, well, since the sirens really don't have that much to do with it, probably it is.

Francisco de Goya said, or painted really, "THE DREAM OF REASON BEGETS MONSTERS," in his etching to the right, and certainly in his head it did, and he painted them for the world to see.  Monsters is not a new topic here at The Wall, and I am not (thank me later) going to bore you by getting into it again.  The point isn't the monster, but the dream that produces it.  Perhaps all of us, rational or not, yet beget monsters--more or less monstrous--through our dreams.

Consider the first four stanzas of Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" (taking the poetry's intent likely far from its originally intended context):

This is the one song everyone

would like to learn: the song

that is irresistible:

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows

because anyone who has heard it

is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret

and if I do, will you get me

out of this bird suit?

(I wonder if the deliberate removal from context and subsequent application of a quotation is anything like the deliberate and maligned censoring of an author's published words.  If so, I am guilty, guilty, guilty.)

Goya

Good poetry is like a dot-to-dot in one of those coloring/activity books I buy my kids to keep them quiet in church.  The dots, obviously as there but the connecting of them is left to the reader.  While I'm in no way claiming any of this (my words) as poetry, much less good poetry, I am leaving the majority of dot-connecting to you--one poem, quotation, and painting to the next--partially because I think the connections are more profound that way, but mostly because my kids just went to bed (which really means things are supposed to be quiet but they aren't--at all) and I'm having a really hard time focusing long enough to articulate the shortest and most menial of my thoughts.

One of my favorite poems to use in my English classroom, and quite a classic, is "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (below), by Adrienne Rich.  It's a great poem, and it's a perfect one to teach because of its abundant use of classic (and by "classic," here, I mean all the required stuff that shows up all over state boards of education English curricula) poetic devices.  All that aside, sure the poem is beautiful, but pay attention to the tigers, the dreaminess, and how, really, they're indeed monsters from the dreams of a rational or reasonable mind:

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid. 

Now put that together with “Dreamtigers,” by another of my all-time favorites, the great Jorge Luis Borges (seriously, if you like any of the stuff we talk about here at The Wall and you haven’t read this guy yet, get with the program!):

In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger—not the jaguar, that spotted “tiger” that inhabits the floating islands of water hyacinths along the Parana’ and the tangled wilderness of the Amazon, but the true tiger, the striped Asian breed that can be faced only by men of war, in a castle atop an elephant.  I would stand for hours on end before one of the cages at the zoo; I would rank vast encyclopedias and natural history books by the splendor of their tigers.  (I still remember those pictures, I who cannot recall without error a woman’s brow or smile.)  My childhood outgrown, the tigers and my passion for them faded, but ther are still in my dreams.  In that underground sea or chaos, they still endure.  As I sleep I am drawn into some dream or other, and suddenly I realize that it’s a dream.  At those moments, I often think: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will, and since I have unlimited power, I am going to bring forth a tiger.

            Oh, incompetence!  My dreams never seen to engender the creature I so hunger for.  The tiger does appear, but it is all dried up, or it’s flimsy-looking, or it has impure vagaries of shape or an unacceptable size, or it altogether too ephemeral, or it looks more like a dog or bird than like a tiger.

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There is another piece of lit that I think qualifies, potentially, as part of this dot-to-dot, but it's bigger than I've got space her to include, a children's story, frequently banned, entitled, Little Black Sambo. Here’s the link (HERE – scroll down to the story), and then here, too, is the old movie.

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