The beggarly salary of Hillary Rochester

The Washington Times reviews Ruth Brandon's Governess: The Life and Times of the Real Jane Eyres. This is its first paragraph:

Jane Eyre, who not surprisingly finds herself in the subtitle of this informative book, is in the minds of many people the archetypal governess, yet there could have been few less typical either as to character or destiny. Her creator, Charlotte Bronte, though, knew her stuff on the subject from personal experience: She had herself been a governess at the beggarly salary of 20 pounds per annum. (Martin Rubin)

The mention is quite accurate:

(...) I am fairly stablished in my new place. It is the family of Mr. White of Upperwood House, Rawdon. The house is not very large but exceedingly comfortable and well regulated; the grounds are fine and extensive. In taking the place I have made a large sacrifice in the way of salary, in the hope of securing comfort by which word I do not mean to express good eating and drinking, or warm fire, or soft bed, but the society of cheerful faces, and minds and hearts not dug out of a lead of mine, or cut from a marble quarry. My salary is not really more than £16 p.a., though it is nominally £20, but the expense of washing will be deducted therefrom. My pupils are two in number, a girl of eight and a boy of six. (Charlotte Brontë to Ellen Nussey, 3 March 1841)

Not to the first time that Hillary Clinton gets compared with the Brontës, but certainly the first time the reference goes deep into Brontë criticism:

In their landmark book of literary criticism "The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination" (1979), Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar were among the first to spotlight this noxious theme, this isolation and ridicule of powerful women by labeling them crazy, hysterical, perverse, monstrous. To challenge male domination—of the world, or just of oneself—was to be risk being marginalized, ostracized, locked away like Rochester's wife in "Jane Eyre" (1847), the fate that gave the book its title. In real life, behavior that strayed from the polite, demure norm expected of women in the 19th Century was rewarded with psychiatric evaluations and often, imprisonment and death. (Julia Keller in The Chicago Tribune)

AudioBookTreasury.com has published an audiobook version of Jane Eyre. Read by several free contributors, you can listen to all the chapters here.

South in the Winter has reread Jane Eyre and loved it and joins the group of people who think Richard Armitage should be Ellen Page's Mr Rochester. Actually, we don't disagree.

And My London Your London writes a long post on the exhibition Blood on Paper.

Finally, more horse slang with our equine Charlotte Brontë as guest star:

The fillies outnumber the colts in the Gowran Park Rooftop Restaurant Race, in which Summit Surge is highest-rated but must give considerable weight to all his rivals. However, Ger Lyons' charge ran a nice race in better company last Sunday at Leopardstown and should go very close. Charlotte Bronte is hard to assess and her strength in the market will be helpful in determining her prospects. (Johnny Ward in The Independent (Ireland))

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Audio-Radio, Books, Jane Eyre, References, Weirdo