Rochester, the narcissistic jerk

The Lansing State Journal gives more information about the Jane Eyre performances in the Lansing Community College that we presented on a previous post. The Rochester in this production doesn't seem very fond of the original novel:

Picture credits: (KEVIN W. FOWLER/Lansing Community College) (Source)

Tucked away in schoolday memories is an obligation:
Hey, weren't you supposed to read "Jane Eyre"? Did you really do it?
"I loved (reading) it in the beginning, but I didn't finish it in time," confessed Chad Badgero, who is directing the Lansing Community College production that opens today.
"Shamefully, I had to turn to the CliffsNotes. I somehow felt that I let (author) Charlotte Bronte down."
The stars of his LCC show, Kasie Flaherty and Doak Bloss, have a less-guilty view. Neither is fond of the novel - "I really dislike the writing," Bloss said - but both are big on the story. (...)
They provide one of fiction's great contrasts:
• Jane, orphaned and ignored. "She's a strong, independent woman who has to fight to find a place," Flaherty said. "This was written at a time when women weren't expected to be independent; they were expected to be subjugated."
• Rochester. "He's one of a series of narcissistic jerks I've played," Bloss said.
Or, at least, he seems to be. He keeps a stiff surface, holding tight to a secret.
"He seems like someone with a mask on," Bloss said. "In Jane, he finds someone who might be able to take that mask off."
We meet the adult Jane instantly. Flaherty stands on one corner of the stage, narrating an account of her early pain.
That's when we see the younger Jane (Julie Jones). Her aunt treats her coldly, but she gets a good education.
So the adult Jane arrives at Thornfield Hall as a teacher for Rochester's daughter. At first, she stays quiet. "She knows about being in an environment where she's not supposed to speak," Flaherty said.
That won't last. She and Rochester are opposites in temperament, background and - especially - age. (...)
This is a story that jolted a genteel time with its ferocity. One early reviewer attacked its "coarseness," but author W.M. Thackeray said he was "extremely moved."
Later, Virginia Woolf would write of "the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Bronte." Woolf, one assumes, went beyond the CliffsNotes version.

George Packer's theatre play Betrayed and its Emily Brontë reference have appeared previously on BrontëBlog. Now Spiegel International returns to it:

They meet the young Intisar, who can recite Emily Brontë by heart and refuses to cover her hair. "I don't want to do anything that someone obliges me to do," she proclaims. (Marc Pitzke)

More things: The Hebden Bridge Times publishes the results of last Saturday's Wuthering Hike race. The Chicago Tribune reviews Eileen Favorite's The Heroines where Catherine Earnshaw appears (check this post for more information). Doveygreyreader is reading Justine Picardie's Daphne:

The book is a compelling blend of fact and fiction, faction I suppose? A real blurring of traditional literary boundaries with biography, historical literary detail, reworked themes and explorations and an innovative extraction of elements from Rebecca which intertwine with Daphne's life and that of a student researching her life long after her death. Mix in Daphne Du Maurier's The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte and an associated Bronte theme and the end result is all an intoxicating patchwork for an enthusiast like me.

Two Spanish blogs with Brontë entries. Donde se posa el Sol which invents an unlikely (and chronologically impossible) further correspondence between M. Héger and Charlotte Brontë. arteyliteratura posts a very interesting article arguing that the real mirror image of Jane Eyre is not Bertha but Catherine Earnshaw. Eclectic Whatnot writes about Jane Eyre.

And finally, a great post. Painters of Modern Life posts a vindication of Anne Brontë. A quite interesting and worthwhile reading:

Whatever her reason, I wish Charlotte had not suppressed Tenant. She forbade it from being reprinted after Anne's death, and by the time her own death lifted the ban, Anne had been largely discounted as a writer and Tenant had been largely forgotten as a work of literature.(...)
Before Charlotte's act of censorship, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had been a best-seller, second only to Jane Eyre in popularity amongst the sister's books, but Charlotte did her best to pretend Anne had never written it. She says as much: Wildfell Hall "hardly appears to me desirable to preserve," she writes to her publisher as Emily and Anne's literary executor.
Thus a century or more judged Anne largely by Agnes Grey, the only thing in print and readily available. It's nice and well-executed, ironic and understated, but nothing too special. Tenant is Anne's masterpiece and is as deserving of it status as a classic as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are (and remember: when Anne wrote Tenant, she was younger than when Charlotte wrote The Professor --- just imagine what Anne might have become if she'd lived just a few years longer).(...)
In a way, it was Charlotte's perception of her sister (popularized by Elizabeth Gaskell) that many people have seen when they look at the youngest Bronte. And that has coloured readings of Anne's work ever since; people approach it with an idea of what it is, and what the author is (and isn't) capable of, and these ideas trace their lineage to Charlotte's ideas of dear gentle Anne. Any time we come to a text, we are influenced by our preconceptions of both it and its author, but rarely can such a large majority of these be traced to a single source.
Thankfully this has started to change, but not in any significant way until 20-30 years ago. Before then, it was rare for Anne's texts to be subject to critical inquiry outside the context of Bronteana.
So. I find the relationship between Anne and Charlotte so intriguing. There was such love between them, that fact is absolutely clear (read accounts of Anne's final illness, when it was just the two of them left; it's heartbreaking stuff). I really don't intend to suggest Charlotte was motivated by malice, just misunderstanding. And here we are 159 years after the fact, and an elder sister's inability to see the genius in the younger influences us still. (Michael Collins)

Categories: Anne Brontë, Books, Jane Eyre, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights