The Washington Post discusses the concept of 'book boyfriends'.
Of course, neither the fantastical nor the problematic book boyfriend is new. In 1848, a literary magazine reported that “New England States were visited by a distressing mental epidemic, passing under the name of the ‘Jane Eyre fever.’” Boarding schoolgirls and governesses were the most likely to be afflicted, the writer reported, as well as young men who, inspired by the book’s male protagonist, “began to swagger and swear in the presence of the gentler sex, and to allude darkly to events in their lives which excused impudence and profanity.” This was, presumably, a result of women and girls expressing attraction to a made-up character who kept his wife in an attic and who, the text tells the reader repeatedly, isn’t even handsome. Like today’s book boyfriends, Mr. Rochester’s impact seems to be a joint production of the writer’s deftness and the readers’ wild imaginations.
As in “Jane Eyre,” book boyfriends in the “dark romance” genre commit acts that would send real boyfriends to prison. “I think readers are very aware that there is a difference between a fictional man on the page written by usually a woman or femme, and an actual human man who has been shaped by society,” [Marcela Di Blasi, an assistant professor in the Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies Department at Dartmouth who is working on a book about the politics of romantasy] said of violent and controlling book boyfriends. “Having these characters is a way for a lot of readers to explore those things in a safe way.”
A more unique and recent trend, Di Blasi noted, is romance novels in which “men learn from their mistakes.” In books such as those by the writer Adriana Herrera, “they are accountable,” Di Blasi said. “They don’t wait to be educated by the women in their life.” This is quite a contrast to Jane Eyre who, 178 years ago, had to go crawling door-to-door begging for porridge and then nearly married her creepy cousin before Mr. Rochester was changed enough for the two lovers to reconcile. (Jenny Singer)
Many thanks for using that patronising tone when crediting readers with enough discernment to tell imaginary characters from real people.
The Times begins an article on the powerlessness of teachers when confronting problematic pupils as follows:
The sadistic schoolmaster is an honourable subset in the body of English literature. From Jane Eyre’s Mr Brocklehurst to David Copperfield’s Mr Creakle and Nicholas Nickleby’s Wackford Squeers, the birch-happy teacher is a universally recognised cypher for the corruption of power.
It’s a role not limited by gender. Miss Minchin, in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic A Little Princess, and Matilda’s Miss Trunchbull are every bit as terrifying.
School bullies have always existed, of course. Dickens’s James Steerforth and Thomas Hughes’s Harry Flashman are archetypes. But violent pupils routinely attacking teachers would not have occurred to even the most inventive novelist of centuries past. Such a scenario would have required a suspension of disbelief beyond the imagination of the average reader. (Gillian Bowditch)
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