Don't Mess with My Heroines

Wow! I was shocked a few weeks ago my daughter and daughter in law launched into an attack on Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. They had nothing good to say about the master of Thornfield Manor.  

Now granted this was during a football game and I can’t really even remember how we got on the subject. But they thought he was interested in Jane just because of her naiveté. The rich sophisticated lady he had been dating (did they date in the 19^th century?) would have figured him out along with his secret madwoman in the attic thing right away.

"He only wanted Jane because he felt he could manipulate her," they said.  My lame response was “Gee, sure he was a jerk, I know, but wasn't he purified by the fire?”

“Well, that,” they said, “when she returns  to him all she’s got is an invalid to take care of.” Was this when I started sputtering? “I am sure, absolutely positive, he gets better and becomes the man Jane deserves.

Remember right after Jane says ‘Reader, I married him,’ she tells us that he could see their child Right?  

Right, indeed. He remained a jerk to these two charming critics.

I thought it was interesting that this generation of women born of those of us who had experienced the women's movement of the 70s were so judgmental of the patriarchal Rochester. I left it there.

Yesterday reading Death in a Strange Country one of the mysteries in the  Inspector Brunetti series written by Donna Leon, Brunetti's wife, a professoressa of English literature, and a very liberated woman by any cultural standard (except for the fact that she frequently seems to prepare two incredible meals in a single day), described Jane Eyre as a "cunning, self-righteous little bitch".

Where have I been? What vale of BBC/PBS reruns has ruled my interpretations of this 19th century classic? I thought I was as liberated as the next working girl. But wow I've always admired Jane.

Self-righteous, I will grant Signora Brunetti. Of course she was self-righteous. Where would she have been without her righteousness? Cunning? Now that’s out of left field. How was she cunning? She seems anything but. Did she beguile with her piety? She refused to marry him with a wife in the attic and ran away and suffered quite terribly. What a diva!

Maybe the moral here is you can mess with the heroes of the books I love,

but let my heroines alone.

I would like to point out, heroine wise, that my anger skipped right past Ms. Leon and went straight for Signora Brunetti, who I might say is usually a heroine of mine. She talks about  Henry James so much the Commissario is jealous. To me she is at this moment in the kitchen of their fourth floor walk up in Venice stirring her marinara with one hand and a copy of Portrait of a Lady in the other.

Maybe she should re read Jane Eyre.