Well I was sure pleased to
see my 295 classmate Chrys patiently pick her way through my tangle of
almost-thoughts (those things that show up in my head bearing the Real
Thoughts’ regrets that they will be so tardy).
Among other things, her thorough response impressed upon me the
difficulty of finding a happy medium between the blogger’s realm of “Wasn’t the
guy who played Rochester in [insert favorite film adaptation here] totally
hot??” or “Confession time. Would you
ever actually marry a course, blind cripple
on the verge of bankruptcy?” and its opposite, the realm heavily jargon-ed
research stuff. (Believe it or not, such
a happy medium is sometimes harder than academic research. It bears the intellectual challenge of
unfolding and simplifying the great and mysterious. Yes, I’m paraphrasing President Taylor here.)
So I decided to look for a
group of readers who would be capable of discussing Jane
Eyre intellectually without the full program of a theoretical
background. I went straight to goodreads.
I posted on book reviews,
discussions of genre in general, and more, but I got the most positive
engagement on a popular discussion based on, “Saint John being a bit of an ****.” (Now I know what you’re thinking, but I
promise the discussion actually did manage to provoke some intelligent
conversation. Here’s the link. My comments start at Message 88.) Readers have been frustrated with the St.
John Rivers/Marsh End section since forever it seems like. So I took that frustration as my point of
entry. Along with most everyone in the
discussion, I essentially asked, “Why
are we so impatient with St. John, and are we justified?” But whereas most people pointed to St. John’s
defects (his ****edness), I went for a more fundamental explanation. “After all,” I said, “we as readers have a
great capacity to love horrendous characters if the author so wishes. Mr. Rochester is an obvious example. And even though Bertha is freaky, we like her
presence in the story too.”
Here’s a
summary of my online thought process (go to the goodreads link if you want to
see the conversation that informed all this): Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre as a Gothic romance. So,
naturally, we want to see Rochester, our Gothic hero, get his act together so
he can marry Jane. Instead, we are given a seven-chapter disruption at Marsh
End. And no matter how beneficial that
disruption might be to Jane’s growth, it’s going to cause us some
irritation. But if you think about it,
up to that point, Mr. Rochester has literally been Jane’s ONLY hope of being
treated as someone other than an inferior.
So isn’t us wanting Rochester to rescue Jane without further delay kind
of selling Jane short? Shouldn’t we
allow her the opportunity to at least consider other grounds for equality, so
that she can decide for herself what kind of marriage she wants?
So anyway, the goodreads
folks asked good, challenging questions, they gave me positive feedback, I got
some more helpful comments on my tweethis statementsjkl;aejfl;ksfj… here’s my
updated thesis statement:
By
breaking genre expectations, the Marsh End chapters of Jane Eyre can cause
readers to experience an ironic disappointment with Jane’s new opportunities
for equality, exposing a villain within readers themselves.
This is a perfect example of the process I hoped to see happen of evolving your argument through social engagement and critique. Do you think your revised thesis would create meaningful discussion within that same goodreads group?
ReplyDeleteBy "group", Do you mean something outside of the discussion board? I made a new goodreads friend Lynne through the discussion and she and I have been having some good dialogue. I haven't tried it posting my thesis elsewhere on the group though. I don't want to spam them.
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