Jane Eyre (and sort of, to a way, way lesser degree Wuthering Heights) is one of those things I can handwave. I'm always surprised that people focus on the romance or "romance" though because I've always liked it for Jane being the moral little boss that she is, struggling against class and money and weirdos, surviving Lowood, leaving Rochester even though it'd be so easy to choose the comfortable route, etc.
Also it doesn't hurt that I saw the movie first, so in my head Rochester looks vaguely like Orson Welles, and it was Aldous Huxley or Graham Greene doing the screenplay, so there was no 100 pages of St John blahblahblah or Charlotte Bronte's awful, awful prose. Rochester flinging himself down on a chaise-lounge, possibly in tears, is one of the worst mental images a book has ever given me (not helped by the vaguely-Orson-Welles thing). I think prose is the main reason I can get by Wuthering Heights. Plot-wise it's like...okay?...??? But Emily Bronte has this cackle running through WH that I wish was in JE.
oblig: i am not okay with the racism. ooh those oversexed french ladehs/crazy spanish women~~ settle down with a nice english rose~~~ oblig 2: also not okay with rochester getting maimed. for one it's like, what, he has to literally be damaged goods? and also it makes jane seem like some sort of opportunist looking for a co-dependent hookup and that's just :C
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Also it doesn't hurt that I saw the movie first, so in my head Rochester looks vaguely like Orson Welles, and it was Aldous Huxley or Graham Greene doing the screenplay, so there was no 100 pages of St John blahblahblah or Charlotte Bronte's awful, awful prose. Rochester flinging himself down on a chaise-lounge, possibly in tears, is one of the worst mental images a book has ever given me (not helped by the vaguely-Orson-Welles thing). I think prose is the main reason I can get by Wuthering Heights. Plot-wise it's like...okay?...??? But Emily Bronte has this cackle running through WH that I wish was in JE.
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oblig 2: also not okay with rochester getting maimed. for one it's like, what, he has to literally be damaged goods? and also it makes jane seem like some sort of opportunist looking for a co-dependent hookup and that's just :C
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