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ariadnes_stringOh, y'all, I finally got to see Jane Eyre yesterday!
And maybe the movie had issues, and maybe they left out some of my favorite bits, but I haven't read the novel in a long time, and I'd forgotten how much I fucking love that story (even though, as my childhood friend D. called me up specially to tell me, it's been messing with women's idea of "love" for almost 200 years).
Charlotte Bronte hated Jane Austen, and since I have all of Austen very fresh in my mind right now, I could really see why. In some ways, Jane is clearly a revision/critique of Elizabeth Bennet. Sure, they are similar in that they are both "spunky" and hold tight to their ideals, especially when it comes to their right to make a cross-class marriage. But whereas Lizzie does so from the context of an annoying but comfortable family life (and the intimacy and support she gets from her sister Jane), Jane Eyre is like an emotional Robinson Crusoe. No one loves her at all when she's young, except for Helen Burns, and no one loves her in the way she deserves to be loved until the very end of the novel. But does she let it hold her down or back? She does not.
She's the heroine of the unloved, y'all. The unloved and violent. Because she's also a version of someone like Austen's Fanny Price--a poor child taken into a rich family. But whereas Fanny just sucks up the abuse meted out to her, Jane fights back with her fists and her words. Those scenes of the young Jane are actually my favorite in the novel, and the movie did a good job with them ("How will you avoid Hell?" "By keeping healthy and not dying.")
I thought Mia Wasikowska was almost perfect as Jane. Beautiful and plain at the same time, and she made Jane's moral certitude kind of glow, which is a hard thing to pull off. I didn't feel much one way or the other about Michael Fassbender's Rochester. He was good, but he didn't exactly light my fire.
And what ofEsca Jamie Bell, you ask? He was fine, in a side-burned kind of way--it wasn't really his movie, though. My friend K., who was sitting on one side of me, and who knows more about these things than I do, pointed out that he looked nothing like book!St. John, who is supposed to be blond and beautiful in a "classical Greek way." More of an asshole, too, if my memory serves me right. Thought, my friend D., sitting on my other side, rightly noted that "You were born to be a missionary's wife" has got to be the worst marriage proposal ever.
Also: OMG, moors!
Extremely short responses to the other things I watched over the weekend.
A Game of Thrones 1.1 (haven't seen 1.2 yet):
OMG Northern Ireland!
I have been to Dublin, and to the west and south of Ireland, and loved it soooo much. But clearly I have to go to Northern Ireland too.
I read the first book of the series, and enjoyed it, but got bogged down after a while because I couldn't connect to the characters much past their political machinations and lust. Mileage varies on this, obviously. But I enjoyed that first hour. Especially Peter Dinklage.
Supernatual 6.18
OMG serape!
I haven't watched much of S6, and so I have no idea what is going on mytharc-wise. But I could resist neither the costumes nor, astwoskeletons put it, the cosplay. I was not disappointed.
Is there new H50 tonight?
And maybe the movie had issues, and maybe they left out some of my favorite bits, but I haven't read the novel in a long time, and I'd forgotten how much I fucking love that story (even though, as my childhood friend D. called me up specially to tell me, it's been messing with women's idea of "love" for almost 200 years).
Charlotte Bronte hated Jane Austen, and since I have all of Austen very fresh in my mind right now, I could really see why. In some ways, Jane is clearly a revision/critique of Elizabeth Bennet. Sure, they are similar in that they are both "spunky" and hold tight to their ideals, especially when it comes to their right to make a cross-class marriage. But whereas Lizzie does so from the context of an annoying but comfortable family life (and the intimacy and support she gets from her sister Jane), Jane Eyre is like an emotional Robinson Crusoe. No one loves her at all when she's young, except for Helen Burns, and no one loves her in the way she deserves to be loved until the very end of the novel. But does she let it hold her down or back? She does not.
She's the heroine of the unloved, y'all. The unloved and violent. Because she's also a version of someone like Austen's Fanny Price--a poor child taken into a rich family. But whereas Fanny just sucks up the abuse meted out to her, Jane fights back with her fists and her words. Those scenes of the young Jane are actually my favorite in the novel, and the movie did a good job with them ("How will you avoid Hell?" "By keeping healthy and not dying.")
I thought Mia Wasikowska was almost perfect as Jane. Beautiful and plain at the same time, and she made Jane's moral certitude kind of glow, which is a hard thing to pull off. I didn't feel much one way or the other about Michael Fassbender's Rochester. He was good, but he didn't exactly light my fire.
And what of
Also: OMG, moors!
Extremely short responses to the other things I watched over the weekend.
A Game of Thrones 1.1 (haven't seen 1.2 yet):
OMG Northern Ireland!
I have been to Dublin, and to the west and south of Ireland, and loved it soooo much. But clearly I have to go to Northern Ireland too.
I read the first book of the series, and enjoyed it, but got bogged down after a while because I couldn't connect to the characters much past their political machinations and lust. Mileage varies on this, obviously. But I enjoyed that first hour. Especially Peter Dinklage.
Supernatual 6.18
OMG serape!
I haven't watched much of S6, and so I have no idea what is going on mytharc-wise. But I could resist neither the costumes nor, as
twoskeletons put it, the cosplay. I was not disappointed.Is there new H50 tonight?
