My first love was Mr. Rochester, the stony silent tragic fella from Jane Eyre. The plot of Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece, for those of you who’ve forgotten, goes like this:
Mr. Rochester: I’m pretending I don’t like you.
Jane: I’m pretending I don’t like you, either.
Mr. Rochester: Oh what the heck, let’s get married.
Minister: And do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?
Fate: Not so fast, champ. Anything you want to confess, Mr. Rochester?
Mr. Rochester: No. Well… okay, technically I’m already married to a crazy woman whom I keep captive in the attic, but don’t hold it against me. It could happen to anyone.
Jane: I’m outta here.
[Time passes]
Mr. Rochester: Fortunately, my wife died. Let’s get married.
Jane: I didn’t want to marry my cousin anyway.
If you haven’t read Jane Eyre, you should. Believe it or not, the book is actually better than the tidy little summary I’ve just presented. And I don’t want you reading Wide Sargasso Sea until you’ve read Jane Eyre.
Got it? Jane Eyre, then Wide Sargasso Sea.
Wide Sargasso Sea, by the extraordinarily talented Jean Rhys, is the story of the mad wife in the attic. Rhys turns the story of Jane Eyre upside down on its head and kicks it out the door. For starters, the mad wife is not a slobbering old monster named Bertha but a gorgeous young woman named Antoinette who lives in the lushly-portrayed West Indies. And it slowly emerges that Mr. Rochester is not the dreamy manly-man of Jane Eyre, but a frigid, controlling, insensitive jerk.
Rhys (rhymes with “geese”) is the twentieth century’s most underappreciated writer. (That’s just my opinion, o’course.) She does truly divine things with language. The sentences are deceptively simple, with layers and shades and nuances all packed into a sparse, stark style. All of her novels are raw, powerful, dark, and bleak. Don’t read Rhys when you want something light and fun. Do read Rhys when you want to be blown away.
Check the WRL catalog for Wide Sargasso Sea
Check the WRL catalog for Jane Eyre
We need more annotations in dialogue format. Jane Eyre just got more interesting for me. How about an entry for Pride and Prejudice? Oh, wait. That’d be kinda the same dialogue now, wouldn’t it? Okay, do, ummmm, do Silence of the Lambs!
The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris
Starling: I’m in the FBI. I hate criminals.
Lecter: I eat people.
Starling: Ew.
Lecter: But I’m really sexy. Anthony Hopkins plays me in the movie.
Starling: I’m sexy in the movie, too. Jodie Foster plays me.
Lecter: Rarrrow.
Starling: You can’t trick me with your mind games.
Lecter: Did I mention I’m also debonair, suave, and erudite?
Starling: Fine, I have this amazing crush on you. But I’ll never admit it.
Lecter: Yes you will, in the next book.
The End
Heh. This could be a whole new game. It’s better than Cliff’s Notes. But I’d fail the essay portion of the test. Do The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
[Boom!]
Boy: I’m hungry.
Man: Don’t eat anyone.
Boy: Everyone else is doing it.
Man: That’s because they are bad, whereas we are good. [Dies]
Other Man: No, we are not all bad. Come join my family and we will live happily ever after, insofar as that is possible in a McCarthy novel, which it’s not.
The End.
OK, my turn! The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
Policeman 1: Look at that weird murder scene – it’s full of iconography!
Policeman 2: Call Harvard!
Robert Langdon: If I read these symbols correctly, Jesus’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter is standing in this room! Or someone dropped a pizza.
Sophie Neveau: Don’t look at me! Even if I am the only woman in the room.
Wicked Monk: Arrgh!
Robert and Sophie: Run away! The Pope is after us!
Creepy Holy Grail Expert (drumming his fingers on the desk): It is a very good thing that you have come to me. I have everything in the world except the Holy Grail.
Robert and Sophie: We trust you!
Wicked Monk: Arrgh!
Robert and Sophie: Run away! The Pope is still after us! Let’s go to England – he’ll never find us there.
CHGE: You never suspected that someone who devoted his whole life to finding the Holy Grail might be insane, did you?
Robert and Sophie: D’oh!
Robert: I’ll never let harm come to Sophie – SHE’S the …
CHGE: Yes you will – don’t drop that! Nooooooo!
Sophie: So I am Jesus’s great-great-great-great -great-great-great granddaughter.
Sophie’s Grandmother: No, you’re the granddaughter of Jesus’s great-great-great-great -great-great-great granddaughter.
Sophie: Great!
Robert: My head hurts – I’m going back to France. Call me when you quit acting so holier-than-thou.
I HEART you guyz!
I recommend that readers pick up The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde for a humorous alternative view of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester.
Oh, and I think the new format for plot summaries is terrific.