“I’m not like other men...”“Fuck off, Edward.”
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre is a classic Bildungsroman, following the plain but intensely moral Jane as she makes her way through life. This week, Marie Fury and Rorschach Tess ask: is this modern gothic romance just about a load of pricks?
Marie Fury: St John is a real prick, isn’t he, trying to make Jane marry him and come to India, even though he knows she’ll probably die?
Rorschach Tess: Yup.
MF: The alternative isn’t much better TBF – Mr “marry me, Jane, and never mind my mad wife who I keep in the attic” Rochester.
RT: They're all a bit prickish really.
MF: She's caught between a prick and a hard place.
RT: Niiiice.
MF: I think the Brontës were partly just writing their own 50 Shades-style porn, with all these cruel yet strangely attractive men.
RT: What else are they going to do? They were 20-odd and living in West Yorkshire.
RT: Rochester does have a soft side. That thing he says about being tied to Jane by an invisible string is very affecting.
MF: He talks a good game, but what about when they’re engaged and she’s like, “Hmm, he keeps pawing me. I’d better annoy him constantly so he doesn’t get carried away.”
RT: Yeah ok, that's a hell of a strategy.
MF: I feel like you shouldn’t have to devise a cunning plan to get a man who professes to love you not to assault you.
RT: I wonder if he's dying to conquer her purity. I mean, there's 'hard to get' and there's Miss Jane Eyre.
MF: It does seem an UNCANNY coincidence that the soulmate he’s been looking for his entire life is an 18-year-old virgin in his employ.
RT: OMG is Rochester the Robin Thicke of 19th-century literature?! 😱
MF:
“Blurred lines...”
“Er, no, I’ve been pretty clear actually.”
“But you put your slightly nicer grey silk frock on instead of your black one. Tease.”
“Fuck off, Edward.”
RT: Maybe she was asking for it by saving his life. I mean, nothing says “take me" like a woman throwing a chamber pot of water over you in her nightie.
MF: She clearly fancies the pants off Mr R, though.
RT: She doesn’t feel like that about St John.
MF: No, and he SAYS he’s not into her sexually either. And yet, for all his “I just want to marry you so we can do God's work. You can’t possibly travel with me otherwise”, he never thinks to say “no need for the sex part obvs.” 🤔
RT: Basically, all of them need to keep their St Johns to themselves.
MF: Words to live by.