With... Adam Sargant
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It's our last episode of series 1!!! Expect ghost, ghouls and lots of
laughs as we round off the series with Adam Sargant, AKA Haunted Haworth.
We'll be...
22 hours ago
Jane Eyre's Rival: The Real Mrs RochesterJane Eyre's Rival is a two-into-one sort of book, helpfully separated into chapters with different fonts by the author to help the reader differentiate both sides of the book. The chapters written in a modern sans serif font broach the subject of relationships, initially from a fictional point of view, as thought out by an imaginary American woman named Lisa who is studying at Cambridge and who is a descendant of Bertha Mason. The chapters written in a more classical-looking font are those that concern us, BrontëBlog, the most.
Clair Holland
Kindle Edition/ Paperback
File Size: 203 KB/ISBN: 978-1-907527-00-5
Blue Ocean Publishing; 1 edition (10 July 2011)
You dirty whore, I wish you were dead. I rue the day I ever set eyes on you. You bewitched me against my will with your black magic charms all those years ago. But now I will have me a new wife, a slip of a girl so pure and so innocent I will love her for all eternity. If I were more of a man, I would kill you now with my bare hands and be rido of you forever. No, Bertha, you will not thwart me, I will have her. (p.70)Our perception of Rochester and whether he's saying the truth when he states in Jane Eyre that
my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere--though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. (Chapter XXVII)is open to interpretation and whether we choose to believe him but the actual facts - that Bertha is indeed sort of looked after - would seem to prove him right, puting him slightly out of character in Clair Holland's story.
late 1830s after the Abolition of the Slavery Act of 1833.That would push forward Jane Eyre's story almost thirty years (as generally agreed) and therefore Jane would be writing her 'autobiography' in Charlotte Brontë's future, which is strange.
It is true that profound pity ought to be the only sentiment elicited by the view of such degradation, and equally true is it that I have not sufficiently dwelt on that feeling; I have erred in making horror too predominant. Mrs. Rochester indeed lived a sinful life before she was insane, but sin itself is a kind of insanity; the truly good behold and compassionate it as such. (Charlotte Brontë to William Smith Williams, 4th January 1848)(2) As far as we can tell and judging by her acknowledgements Clair Holland went to great lengths to get her horse-related vocabulary right and in keeping with the historic period.
Thanks for this! Sounds like one I won't be reviewing favourably ... once I get around to reading it. Or buying it, for that matter. Can't remember whether or not I have yet!
ReplyDeleteOh, do give it a try! Besides, there's completism and all that ;)
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