Irreverence is the new black

We have good memories here at BrontëBlog, and pre-BrontëBlog things are not lost forever. One of them is the background of Ms Tanya Gold, a woman who works for the Daily Mail supposedly reviewing stuff and most probably writing the same false stuff about Charlotte Brontë time and time again. On the occasion of Charlotte's 150 death anniversary she wrote an article called "Reader, I shagged him". This title only - we have the whole article so if anyone feels like having their stomach figuratively kicked just ask for it through our e-mail - and the new article you are about to read will give you an idea of what kind of writing this woman does. For those of you knowledgeable enough in Harry Potter matters, she would have been the Rita Skeeter of the Brontës' time.

Next to my bed, beside the tweezers, is a copy of Jane Eyre.
I cannot sleep more than a twitch away from Charlotte Bronte's novel — and neither, dear reader, should you. [...]
This novel is simply the best novel ever written by a toothless parson's daughter from Yorkshire — or anybody else. It's romantic fiction redux and it's there to heal your pain.
The plot is absurd and it goes like this. I (Jane) am an orphan. I am ugly. I grow up in a hell-hole. I go to a posh house (Thornfield) to be a governess and its owner, Mr Rochester, falls in love with me.
But he has a mad wife in the attic so I leave him and nearly die of exposure on a moor. But another man called Mr Rivers takes me in and he also falls in love with me. (So that is two men in love with me already by page 400.)

For her favourite book she doesn't seem to have got very well what St John's intention was and who he actually was in love with or what his concept of love was. Perhaps having the book by your bed and your tweezers is not enough. Those letters inside it actually mean something.

Then I inherit a fortune from an uncle but return to Mr Rochester because his wife has died in a fire. He is blind now, but I don't care because I love him. (I told you it was silly.)

It isn't silly. She made it silly.

The love of her life, Monsieur Heger, a master in a school she attended in Brussels, was married and indifferent; her publisher George Smith didn't want her either. When she eventually married her father's ugly assistant, his curate Arthur Bell Nichols (out of pity is my guess), she died nine months later at the age of 39 (out of disappointment is my other guess).

And once again - like in the olden times of her previous article - she made the mistake of assuming something she doesn't know about. Charlotte Brontë turned down several proposals of marriage. And just through a little research she might have found that Charlotte Brontë's marriage was a happy one.

Mr Rochester (I am back now from the reverie, but it was marvellous), whom Jane first meets when he falls off his horse, "has a dark face with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted". Do you get the idea? Do you recognise this tender brute from Barbara Cartland, Mills and Boon, Neighbours?

Judging by this and what comes afterwards, she would have done better to stick to Barbara Cartland. Clearly she doesn't really get the point behind Jane Eyre.

So Jane Eyre isn't the first book in the canon of love-starved fantasy. It is the canon. The only thing I can say against it is that it is indirectly responsible for Dame Barbara Cartland getting published.

Sure you do.

So why not take the best, the ultimate, the only? Go to bed with Rochester. He's only £5.99.

That would depend on the edition ;)

We recently talked about irreverence and reviewers. Well then, it looks like irreverence is all the rage right now.

Categories: Jane_Eyre, Charlotte_Brontë